


Sloshing Along the River

by Estirose



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-30
Updated: 2007-11-30
Packaged: 2019-03-18 18:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13687530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: Marie tries to settle down in a post-Apocalyptic world.





	Sloshing Along the River

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly in "Original Work" because almost all the characters (with the exception of two of the librarians) are Original Characters from various fandoms and yet it didn't fit in all of them. I guess I wanted a meetup? Technically, it's in the same universe as Power Rangers Ninja Storm, more or less.
> 
> Mostly as-is from when I wrote it back in 2007.
> 
> I'll list the characters and their fandoms-of-origins as an end note.

It normally took about five and a half hours for Marie to get from Blue Bay Harbor to Sacramento. That was, of course, when Amtrak was feeling generous, and when she could manage such a mundane task on her busy schedule. Of course, right now she had nothing but time; she'd been promised a call when they could find her some work, but she was on an unplanned vacation. So she'd packed up her stuff into storage, let her apartment go, and headed to Sacramento.

Of course, it had taken several days to find a train running to Sacramento, given the schedule of the Coast Starlight and the feeder bus. Every day, someone would fail to show up or show up sick, and it was getting worse every single time she looked. Half the world had disappeared three months ago; the rest of it seemed to be dying, person by person. Marie had to wonder if she'd be the next one to succumb, or if she'd be one of the people immune to this thing; it didn't sound like a pleasant way to die.

At least her mother was okay, for the moment. And so were the cats. 

The disease sweeping across the nation and world affected animals as much as humans.

Not all of her fellow passengers on the Coast Starlight had been human. That had been the other odd part of all that had happened. The world had taken on new inhabitants, as if to replace the ones that had gone away. She wondered if one day, the world would be back to normal, if somewhat... changed by the experience and the new cultures these new immigrants had brought with them.  
Should be interesting, at the very least.

She stepped into the Amtrak station. This, at least had not changed and would not change until Amtrak shut down or whatever. She hoped it wouldn't. The mural and clock face on the eastern-facing wall had been part of her life for a long time, ever since Amtrak had renovated the station, far back longer than she could remember.

Her mother was waiting for her.

Her mother had retired from the same state service that Marie was still technically employed by. She'd agreed to let Marie stay in her old place, since they'd both figured that Marie had a better chance of a job in the state capitol than she did in Blue Bay Harbor. Heaven knew, Marie needed the company.

"Mom," she said as she hugged her mother, "Thanks for picking me up." 

Marie had never driven in her life. She'd tried to learn to drive, briefly, but could never get over the terror of driving over ten miles an hour; even driving on normal streets was something she didn't like to do. Give her a bicycle or her own two feet any day.

"You're welcome." Her mother drew her into a tight embrace before taking one of her suitcases - she'd put the maximum allowable in, just because it was such a pain to retrieve things from Blue Bay Harbor without a car, and she didn't want to presume on her mom. The days of doing that were, hopefully, long past. "Have you heard anything yet?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure they'll find me something to do." Her civil service classification was very broad; a lot of them were, but before she'd found the Blue Bay Harbor job she'd interviewed for everything from call center work to mail sorting for collectors. And it wasn't like she couldn't find another job in an equivalent classification. 

With more and more people disappearing, she didn't think that they'd be that tetchy about background. Or maybe they would be. Her employer had her phone number.

"I'm sure they will." It was notoriously hard to be fired from state service, her therapist had reminded her of that three years ago when she'd been at her worst. Right now, she was sure she'd find something to do. Something useful. It was great to feel needed.

In fact, Marie was keenly aware that her own self-esteem was based on being needed. She'd been in therapy, been loaded up on books on raising that self-esteem and not being so reliant on others'  
opinions, but it was hard. It was part of the reason she'd accepted employment in Blue Bay Harbor, far away from home, still being in the same state as her mother but not there to run to her mom's arms whenever she felt upset.

"I've cleaned up your room for you," her mom said conversationally, though Marie knew she would. It wouldn't be like living in her apartment, it would be her living in her mom's place again. Her furniture was in storage for a reason, taken to the storage place by a hired van, just because there wouldn't be that room for her stuff.

At least her mother had a suitable library, there were amenities around the corner and other places within walking or bicycling distance, and hopefully the buses would be running to get to downtown at to whatever work someone could find for her.

"Are the buses still running?" she asked, struck by that thought.

"I still see them," her mom replied. She seemed too pale, too tired, just like she had when Grandfather had died. Even with all their help, she had been the one to take the burden of arranging anything.  
Marie could remember that clearly, despite it happening three years ago. There had been three buses that went by her mom's place, but two of them had been official bus routes for school students. Only one had been a standard bus route, and the one that had taken her downtown.

"Good," Marie leaned back in her seat. Her mother turned the corner past the little strip mall, and they were home. Her mom's place, now her place, at least for the moment. Until she could find a place to rent out. Or maybe she'd stay with her mom until things stabilized enough to go back to Blue Bay Harbor.

Yes, the same old place. Garage with cat litter box, with the cabinets that her mom had had installed a year or so before. Still cold, cement floor with nothing to grace it. Door to kitchen with cat door cut awkwardly out of it, first-floor bathroom, kitchen, breakfast room. Dining room and living room, front door and stairs. 

She knew when she went up that the solar would be brimming with books, as usual; the upstairs office with more bookshelves and cat toys. Then the second bathroom, and the two bedrooms.

One of her mother's two cats stalked up to her and sniffed her. The other looked at her for a moment, frozen in fear, before streaking up the stairs to safety. She knew that the cat would eventually get used to her. "Spook's being a spook as usual," she said, following the white streak with her eyes. Below her, the chocolate-coated cat, appropriately named "Chocolate", wound around her legs, and she absently picked the cat up, forgetting that said cat didn't like to be picked up until Chocolate fussed.

She put the cat down. Whatever Chocolate wanted, it wasn't there. And Spook just needed time and presence. She had time. And presence.

"Yes, she is," her mother said, settling down on one of the chairs. Marie left her luggage in the living room and took up residence on the couch. Chocolate leapt up on the couch to join her, seemingly forgiving her for her prior indiscretion.

"They say they'll find someplace to put me," Marie said. "I hope not at the call center." She shuddered at that; she'd spent enough time in that place. She never wanted to work at a call center ever, ever again. "But I guess I gotta take what I can." She was the wrong classification to work Unemployment's call center, thank goodness. "I guess they do have a problem worse than the baby boomers retiring now."

The state was trying to hold itself together, the State doubly so. Marie had to wonder at the rate that everything was going, whether there would be a State of California to work for anymore, or if she was going to have to learn grocery stocking.

Or whatever. Just as long as she was doing something fulfilling, and something that paid the rent or groceries, she was fine. Her mother had her own ideas of who not to work for, and Marie had had enough of a time jobhunting that she wanted to skip some things as well.

"I think so," her mother said. "I've been reading the Bee, and everything's on skeleton crew nowadays, it seems."

Marie nodded. "I've been reading that too." It was like that all over the world, not just California. She decided to change the subject for a moment. "Are you okay?"

Her mother shrugged it off. "I've got a headache, and I'm a little tired."

That could be anything between the plague and a simple Mom-migrane. Or a mundane sickness. Just because the plague was out there didn't mean that her mom had it. She hoped her mom didn't have it.

She wasn't sure if she could handle her mom having it.

"Okay," she said. As if her mom needed her okay to be sick. Like the world revolved around her.

"It's too bad you don't have accounting classes," her mother mused.

"Right now," Marie said, "Does the world need accountants? I'm sure that I could lateral over to accounting tech and nobody would blink an eye. Besides, did you tell me you really didn't need accounting classes to be an accounting tech?"

"True," her mother answered. "I'm sure you'll find something."

"I hope I find something and get trained just in case my next boss calls in dead." That wasn't a totally fair thing to think. As far as she knew, her last boss was still alive. Or maybe he wasn't. It was hard to tell. He was one of the ones that had disappeared in the initial wave - or maybe he disappeared when the tsunami hit Blue Bay Harbor. They'd lost a lot of people that way too, and her workplace was under a few feet of water.

"You told me what happened," her mother said. "I take it nobody's found the body?"

"No," Marie answered. "Not that they'd think to contact us anyway. The office is a loss. We needed to rent something a bit less close to the shoreline." Her mom had probably known about why they'd chosen that location; her mother had known the location of every building their agency owned or rented before she'd retired.

"I'd always wondered about our choice there," her mom said neutrally. "At least we were renting it."

"No chance of an oil well there, eh?" Marie teased lightly. There had been an oil well discovered under one of the agency's properties, she thought somewhere in Southern California somewhere. Maybe one of the Los Angeles offices, she wasn't sure.

"Not likely," her mom answered. "I'm going to make some iced tea, want any?"

"Sure." Of course she wasn't going to refuse. She liked iced tea just as her mother liked iced tea. Yeah, it had caffeine, but not much she could do about it. Besides, her therapist had told her the last thing she needed to do was fret about the occasional glass of tea or such with caffeine in it if she didn't have much choice in the matter. She didn't need to make her anxiety worse about things she couldn't change. And, oh boy, she really needed to work on fretting less about those kinds of things. At least she didn't worry about the iced tea too much; she had yet to find a decaf brand she liked.

Her mom came back with two glasses of iced tea, full of ice and dark, handing it to Marie with a somewhat unsteady hand. Her mother liked her tea strong, while Marie liked her tea weak, but she didn't comment, just sipped at the tea and looked for a place to put it down where Chocolate wouldn't try to drink out of it. She spotted the little side table with the tea mat and put it down there.

"I'll go downtown in the morning, even if I have to walk," Marie said. It was only a couple of miles downtown, if worst came to worst. There were several agencies within walking distance of each other and the capitol building, and she could go door to door looking for work. She had her badge to show she was a genuine employee of the State. "Are you going to sleep in?"

"I can drive you," her mother said.

Marie shrugged. "If I get up early enough, I can put on my jogging shoes and walk there." If she could find a job, then she could afford a bus pass. That would make things even easier. After all, the buses were still running. "I'll carry something that is appropriate office-wear, though."

That cut off her mom's objections. She'd never been great at dress codes, her hair was defiantly messy despite her best efforts, and she never did get those things. Most of the time, her best was to not have clashing shirts and pants.

But she did a good job. She'd have to remember that.

Her mother sipped at her iced tea, and Marie did the same. "I'm sure they'll need you somewhere," her mother said.

"Yeah," Marie agreed. "I'll start asking the security guards. If anyone would know, they would."

Once Marie and her mother had agreed on a course of action, they conversed about other things. Marie's former job and the moving of her stuff from Blue Bay Harbor to Sacramento; her mother's plans to travel once everything stabilized. "If everything stabilizes," Marie said, though she secretly hoped it would be soon.

Eventually, it came time for Marie to unpack, and later on, it was time for dinner. "Marie, could you put the cans on the curb?" her mother asked, and she was happy to do so. Yes, it felt like home. She or her mom always made dinner, every tuesday the trash and recycle bins went out, mail came in, and so on.

"Sure. Do you need me to get the mail too?" The mail key was on the little cloth kitty-cat keychain; she always enjoyed that one.

"No, I got it before you picked it up," her mom said.

"Right," Marie said, slightly disappointed. But she took the trash bins out, wrestling them through the gate that the association had put in a few years ago. There were advantages and disadvantages to living in an attached townhouse.

As she made sure the bins were not where they'd caused anyone any trouble (though she'd not seen many signs of traffic when her mom was driving her home), a noise caused her to turn, and she jumped.

Damn flight-or-fight reaction.

"Excuse me," a man with green hair said. "Could you tell us where the nearest hotel is?"

After calming her racing heart down and telling herself that no, she didn't probably need to run that moment, she attempted to answer the man's question, getting a good look at the three people now in front of her.  
The speaker was an Asian man in his mid-to-late thirties, unremarkable except for green hair where one would expect brown or black to be. There was some kind of mark on his forehead that she couldn't see clearly because of the bangs. He was dressed in backpacking gear, complete with hydration pack and sleeping bag.

Behind him were two others, similarly dressed. The woman was the man's age, a brown-haired Caucasian woman looking entirely of human descent, and a black pre-teen, also of human descent. Marie wasn't good with ages, but she was pretty sure he wasn't a teenager.

"Um." Marie thought fast. There weren't any hotels or motels in the area where she lived; it was strictly residential. The nearest she could think of was the hotel being built out by Captain's Table, but that wasn't complete yet. "Downtown," she said. "Thataway." She paused. "If you go down this street, turn left, you'll eventually come to River's Edge Road. Turn right, follow that up and you'll eventually hit downtown."

"So, not anything closer?" the woman asked, clearly disappointed. "Anybody willing to take us in?"

"I really don't know," Marie admitted. "This is my home town, but I just returned a few hours ago. I don't know who's still here - I'm sure some people are, but I'm not sure who. You can try knocking on doors. There's also a few places for sale - one down that street to the left, turn left, mid-block. It's a halfplex, some of mom's friends who live down the block said they hadn't seen anybody at the property and they've heard the seller died."

That particular pair of neighbors she missed. The two extremely intelligent women had taken their cats with them when they'd left for Oregon, and Marie missed both women and their cats. She wondered if they'd ever come back, or if they had even survived the whole plague thing. She'd have to ask her mom if she'd heard anything.

"Thanks, we'll try that - at least for the evening," the woman said. "Dani Owens. This is my husband Nerran, our son D.M."

"Det," the pre-teen corrected gently.

"Det's his given name, he decided he liked it," Dani said.

"I'm Marie Brown, pleased to meet you," Marie said. "Welcome to Sacramento. Where were you hiking?"

"Yosemite," Dani said. "There's a camp we were hiking to."

"Oh yeah, I've been to Yosemite, I've heard of those," Marie said. "I've hiked myself, but only up to Nevada Falls and down the Four-Mile trail. I'm hoping to do Half Dome someday."

She was rather proud of the fact she'd started hiking. Started getting in shape, started training for half-marathons. It made her fitter, faster, and got rid of a lot of fat. It was one of the neighbors who had left who had turned her on to running. Or at least jogging. Okay, walking with occasional bouts of jogging.

"We did Half Dome last year," Dani said proudly. "That was fun."

Marie grinned. "I bet. I've got to go do a bit of jobhunting the next few days, but give me a yell if you do end up settling down. It's pretty deserted so far, but I'll introduce you to any neighbors I find."  
The woman grinned back. "Thanks, we'll take you up on that." The family walked across the street, heading in the direction of the halfplex.

It occurred to Marie that she wasn't seeing too many trash bins out, and the ones that were there seemed empty, as if their owners hadn't bothered to put them back in.

But that left her mind as she headed back home, going in to eat dinner.

The next day dawned bright, and Marie took out some of her decent casual clothes. Her suit had gone wrinkled, she'd iron it and worry about it if someone wanted an interview. Her nice shoes went in a bag, her jogging shoes on her feet, a little randoseru-style backpack on her back. The adult-sized version of the Japanese kids' backpack was stylish and generally gave a good impression, even if she wasn't really keen on the red.

She started out, following River's Edge up to downtown, checking the businesses along the way to see if they had traffic or were even open. A few were, the school was too, the big box store at the corner of Broadway across from the historic cemetery as well. Some of the eating places down Broadway looked like there were customers there.

Finally she got downtown, started looking. Her own department, the Department of Human Resources Development, was locked closed. She did run across one or two people, who confirmed that they were running skeleton crew. She did pass her phone number along to them, hoping their bosses could use somebody.

Then she went to the other offices, talking to security guards where there were some. One person suggested she go try at Franchise; after all, it was a rotten time to have everything happen, with the tax returns half-processed. She smiled and thanked them and went on her way.

In all, it was a wash. She was tired out, exhausted from having to deal with so many strangers face to face. She spotted a bus going the right way, paid the fare and hoped that someone would call her soon.

There were more people when she got home.

The Owens family was still there; she talked with them and confirmed that they'd found a way into the halfplex on the next street over.

They'd seen very few people since they'd been wandering the neighborhood. But Det, exploring the park, had found a new face at the library. Marie's mother had told her that the library was still operating, the librarians still going. Marie thought she might try to see if they needed a page until she found something along the way.

According to Det, there was a new librarian there, one that had come from another world, one that was perfectly healthy. At least one librarian was looking sick and pale, and might not be coming to work any longer.

Nerran had run across a pair of teenagers playing in the park down the street. "Are you sure they're not from here?" she asked. After all, they'd been in Sacramento just about as long as she had, or maybe less.

"They confirmed to me that they weren't from around here," the green-haired alien assured her. "I believe they've taken an apartment in the complex across from the fire station."

One of her former co-workers had lived in that complex. Marie wondered if she was still there, or had long moved on. "I guess I'll be checking them out. The librarian too." Why she felt like she should be the welcoming committee, she didn't know, but she figured she might as well do something when she wasn't jobhunting.

She didn't go visit the teenagers first. Instead, she headed towards the library.

It was pretty much deserted. In fact, apart from three people, it was deserted. Things were on, the circulation and reference desks were staffed, but apart from the two women staffing the desks and a third shelving books, she didn't see anyone. Quiet, for her neighborhood library. "Hi," she said, once she reached the reference desk. "Could you folks use a helping hand?"

The reference librarian looked tired, like her mother had looked tired. Marie had to wonder if the librarian was sick as well. "Have you ever worked in a library?"

"In high school, in the high school library, yes. That was pre-computerized card catalogs, though." Oh, she had spent so much time typing cards for the catalog up! That and shelving books and putting anti-theft strips in. "I wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. I got a bit sidetracked."

"If you can sort books, we can use you," the woman said. "It won't be full-time, though. And we'll have to work on the payment. Do you have a place to live?"

Marie nodded. "Practically right around the corner. I'm jobhunting, I'd just like a little money."

"Don't we all," the woman opined. "We had to find a place to live for Naoko, over there," she said, indicating the asian woman with the book cart. "She is a librarian, it'll be nice to have her not reshelving books."

"Do you have many customers?" Marie asked. "Nowadays, I mean?"

"A couple," the woman answered. "Even with everything going on, people still use the library. If only to escape everything else going on. Or find out what else is going on."

"I could do with that too," Marie acknowledged. "Marie Brown."

"Catherine Jones," the woman responded, shaking her head. "Welcome to the team."

Marie was sure that when things stabilized, she'd be given the boot. But she would hopefully have something solid by then. In the meantime, Catherine gave her a tour of the library, the public portions, that is. And she met Angelica, the circulation desk librarian, and then Naoko.

Naoko, their newest arrival, has looked over Marie solemnly, as if trying to decide whether she measured up to some standard. Finally, the librarian seemed to decide that Marie was acceptable. "As long as you don't slack, we'll get along fine," she said. "I've seen enough slacking in my life to last me a lifetime."

The woman barely looked like she'd hit legal age in Japan, which was where she'd come from. "Wakarimasu, Tanaka-san."

Naoko blinked. "You speak Japanese?" She seemed suddenly interested in Marie, as if Marie was some well-performing specimen.

"Amari nihongo o hanashimasen," Marie said. She was pretty sure that meant "I don't speak much Japanese" in Japanese.

"Ah," Naoko said, sounding disappointed. "But you're learning?"

"I'm learning," Marie said. "I love languages. I'm not into linguistics, but languages, I love them, even if I'm bad at learning them." Oh, boy, was she really bad at learning them.

Naoko gave her a short nod. "I'll help you with your Japanese, but I can be a harsh taskmaster at times. And if you're interested in languages, I have another one that you might be interested in learning."

"Thank you," Marie said. "I'll try not to disappoint you." It might be a tall order, but she'd try. It had been a long time since she'd been lucky enough to have a native speaker. "Where are you from originally, Tanaka-san? What prefecture?"

"I come from Miyagi prefecture," Naoko answered. "Have you ever been to Japan?"

Marie shook her head. "I've only seen it in pictures. Someday I'd like to see Japan, especially our sister city, Matsuyama, in Ehime prefecture."

"I lived in Matsuyama for a while," Naoko mused. "I should have remembered that it had sister city status with this one, but that hasn't been something I've paid attention to."

"It rarely is," Marie agreed. "The only reason I know about it is because I applied for the Japan Exchange and Teaching program. Matsuyama was my number one choice of where to go."

"It is a pleasant city to live in," Naoko said. But she didn't say anything more, and Marie didn't really want to press. She didn't want to alienate this woman, not with Japanese lessons in the offering and perhaps more.

"I would have loved to live there," Marie answered. "But I didn't get the job." She resisted asking Naoko about the other language, what language family. Maybe it was one of those minor Japanese languages that she'd heard of; that would be interesting. It didn't sound like it was Kensai-ben, which was a dialect of Japanese.

Naoko gave a brief look that said the conversation was over, and went on with her work. Marie did the same, with promises of pay at some point... assuming the city controller's office wanted to cooperated.

With her work done, she headed down to the apartment complex down the street that was the opposite way from the library. She wanted to meet the two teenagers that Danielle had mentioned.

She'd never been in that particular apartment complex. It was gated, and she'd had no reason to ever go in. The only reason she knew about it at all was because it was right across the street from the fire station and the park. The park that was on some online maps as having a lake, and actually could practically function as one after the fall and winter rains.

Marie walked around the outside of the complex, wondering if anybody was home. Then again, it had been hard to tell when anybody was home when the world was fully functioning. She knocked on the manager's door; there was no answer, but that could have been anything from being at work to being dead. She was about to head back when she heard a voice behind her.

"Hi, looking for someone?"

Marie turned around to find two young people. Or teenagers. She wasn't sure which. It wasn't like it was that big a deal anyway. Okay, maybe it was a big deal. "Just slightly. You wouldn't happen to be new in town, would you?"

"Very new in town," the girl said. She was dressed in a style that Marie wasn't familiar with, but at least her outfit seemed to be shirt and pants of some kind. Same for the young man. Boy. Whatever. "My name's Disa, that's Keegan. Are you new around here, too?"

"I grew up in this town," Marie said, then added "And in this dimension. Danielle Owens told me you two were hanging around, so I thought I might say hello. And have you run into anybody in the complex? Or even around here?"

Disa smiled. Well, she had been smiling, but she smiled even more. "A few, since Keegan and I started exploring. You and the Owens folks were the only ones that looked healthy."

"Oh dear," Marie said. Her mind flashed back to her mother, who'd continued to look pale that morning. "So... not too many people, huh?"

"Nope," Disa answered. "I'll be exploring around, I'll be glad to tell you what I see."

"And I'll keep her out of trouble," Keegan said, speaking for the first time. "Somebody has to."

"I keep out of trouble!" Disa looked at Keegan. "I know how to keep out of trouble, even."

"Um, I'll be in and out," Marie said, not wanting to get into something that might escalate into a quarrel. "But I live down the street thataway, around the corner. So, please feel free to let me know."

"We will," Disa promised.

As the two disappeared down the street, Marie turned back to go back home. Three new people in a world where everybody else had disappeared or died. That was interesting. And scary. She wondered how many people the two would ultimately run into.

She wondered how many people she'd ultimately run into herself.

Marie pondered that as she walked the short distance back to her mom's place. "Hi, I'm home," she said, after unlocking the door and stepping in.

Her mother greeted her from upstairs. "Any luck?" she asked.

Marie strode up the stairs, not surprised to find her mom in the solar with a book. "Asked at everything I could downtown, did a trial shift with the library down the street."

"Good," her mom said. "Will they pay you?"

"They hope to," Marie said. "With everything so tentative, they weren't too sure on how they'd be paid themselves. All they care about right now is keeping the library open, and hope that people come back to care."

If anybody was left to come back to, of course. Marie had heard that the victims suffered advanced rapid decomposition and turned to dust. She'd have to find a dead body to make sure. Not that she wanted to really find a dead body, but it would be interesting, just the same.

"I've been trying to call some of my friends, but for the most part nobody's answering," her mother said casually. Marie couldn't imagine who her mom had called; her mom had so many friends.She wondered how the phone lines were holding up; maybe they'd gotten lucky and most of their folk were alive and in the right dimension.

"There were three new people that weren't from 'around here'," Marie said. "A Japanese librarian and two teenagers. The Owens found them. The new librarian's why I found the library job."

Her mother nodded. "If you keep at it, I'm sure you'll find something," she said. "Besides, I know you and I have discussed library school."

"Several times," Marie acknowledged. Only laziness had prevented her from going down that career path... that, and admittedly a self-esteem that needed working on, and the anxiety disorder to deal with. "Maybe after everything goes back to normal."

If everything went back to normal. She hadn't seen a decent newscast in about a month, and the servers around the world were dying just as the humans were.

The next days passed by quietly. A mother and her daughter had moved into the neighborhood, and Marie was somewhat surprised and pleased to find that the mother was a licensed doctor, albeit from a world where aliens had made things much more advanced. Dr. Rosemary Schultz seemed to be happy to take a small vacation, and had plans to head out to the nearest medical center to lend a hand where needed. Her daughter, a teenager named Marianne, seemed moody and withdrawn. Of course, Marie mused, that could have been something to do with being grounded for hacking into the aliens' mothership's computer, something that was really bad for Marianne to do especially, for reasons that Rosemary wasn't quite explaining. Oh well. Maybe someday Marie would hear what happened. Maybe Marianne would tell.

Marie had given those two directions for the nearest high school, with a confession that she had no clue as to whether or not school was even in session. She thought not, but then again the library was still running, so maybe the high school would be too. Learning had to go on, after all.

It still felt weird to have almost nobody in the area. Even the stores and restaurants in the strip mall across from the library were all closed up. Her mom had spoken briefly to the owners of the local grocery store, and they'd planned to go down south to join relatives. Of course, one of the family members had then died, and the other one, according to her mother, wasn't looking that great. So maybe there was nobody there. She hoped they were still alive; she'd have to find a way to pay for groceries anyways. The next nearest store, she thought, was about three miles away, not counting the closed Seven-Eleven.

She ended up forcing the door open on the side of the grocery store, picking up groceries, and leaving a note that she'd pay. As soon as she did get paid, she'd leave money, she promised herself that. They'd never know. Well, at least who was still shopping with them.

When that place was gone, she'd hit the store on Florin. And there was a store after that. And then there was a store up on Freeport. Between them, the two of them should be okay.

Marie decided that she was going to be in really, really good shape by the time everything got back to normal. She'd been able to find something with her old employer for four hours a day, giving her at least some accumulated funds. And the librarians were doing their best to pay her.

She acquired a bicycle with a cargo carrier cheap through a bike shop that was going very out of business. The owner hadn't looked very well at all, and Marie bet that he was not going to live long enough to enjoy the proceeds. He made a joke of resisting selling out to Walmart, and it had taken the end of the world to finally drive him out of business.

The bike was sturdy, and Marie was grateful for the cargo carrier. Hauling stuff was much easier. Her mom still went out on errands, but they'd decided to be careful with the gas - most of the gas stations were deserted as well, and their stocks were starting to get depleted. Her mother wasn't looking great either, but Marie sighed with relief when it looked like it was her mom's pre-existing health conditions and not the plague. At least so far. They both knew that either of them could get it, and that would be the end of them.

Marie took her time getting to know the neighbors, regaling the Owenses, Disa and Keegan, and the Schultzes, with tales of the area. She'd grown up around there, after all. That way, if she got sick and died, at least something of her community would continue.

At the library, she met four more new arrivals, people who had settled slightly farther away, without any prompting. Greer Lewis had been a consultant, her husband Michael a photographer and her assistant. Her speciality was archiving, and Marie had asked her about archiving books.

The other two were teenagers, Teresa DeSantos and Lucas Scott. She didn't have much of an idea about them, but they seemed nice kids. She promised herself that she'd get to know them.

And then she realized that she should start getting to know these people, all of them. Maybe a get-together, a cookout, would bring everybody together. Everybody could share stories and so on.

Of course, that would probably fall to her to organize, but that was okay. Marie could handle that. She could probably get the Owens family to help. She'd gotten from their various conversations that Mr. Owens didn't lie; that was forbidden in his culture and policed very effectively. Even after years on Earth he hadn't gotten out of the habit.

“Marie?Are you okay?” Teresa DeSantos asked. The vaguely hispanic-looking teenager had an arm full of books.

“Just... planning,” Marie said. “Or daydreaming.” It was nearly time to go. “You and Lucas... are you two going to be okay?”

Teresa shrugged. “We have a knack for getting out of danger,” she said. “Besides, the neighborhood seems safe to me.”

“Just be careful,” Marie said. “Just because it seems that way doesn't mean it is.”

"We will," Teresa promised. "Lucas and I know our way around a fight if needs be, too."

Marie nodded. "I'm surprised you hang out at the library."

"Best place for information there is," Teresa said, then went back to her books.

Marie mused about that as she prepared to leave. Teresa was right – when she'd gone to get information, she'd gone to the library too. Teresa and the quieter Lucas seemed to have the right idea on things. Sure, Marie was developing her own web of information, thanks to the Owens family and Disa and Keegan, but she had always trusted the library as a place to get information.

She said goodbye to Catherine and Angela in english, a more formal Japanese apology to Naoko, and left for home.

Her mom was finishing a phone call. Marie went upstairs and put her bag away, knowing that there might be more information from that phone call, some indication that things were going right.

As it was, at least she had people to look after – her mom, the Owens family, Disa and Keegan and in some ways Teresa and Lucas, the Schultzes, and anybody else who happened by. Which she could do with – maybe she wasn't happy unless she had somebody adult or near adult to look after.

In fact, most of her new 'neighbors' seemed like they were mature adults, even the teenagers. She'd met enough teenagers that knew their own minds that she could deal with them; it was immature people of any age she had problems with. Marie knew that she wasn't too good with people who got upset.

Which was probably why she'd finally been diagnosed with anxiety disorder after two years at the call center she'd worked at; she wanted to take care of everyone, and she couldn't. At least the breakdown that the stress had caused had finally caused her to be diagnosed. Once she was diagnosed, she could deal. She had information. She had people that could help.

She wondered if her old therapist was alive, or in practice even. Sacramento was becoming a ghost town, even the train station was fairly quiet. Usually the place was never that dead. She'd have to take a look next time she was downtown.

"Anything useful?" she asked her mom.

"Just talking to an old friend," her mom replied, sounding wistful. No go, then. Though she was happy that another friend of her mom's was still with them. "Rob."

"Oh, the one who went to...."

"Yes." Her mother's tone sounded infinitely more hopeful. "There's a lot of unemployment claims and other matters going on. He was wondering if I'd step into a job as an accountant."

Her mom had been an accountant for as long as Marie could remember. The funny thing was, her degree had never been in accounting. She'd taken classes, yes, but she'd never gone back for a degree. "Lucky," she said. "Retired annuitant?"

"That's what they want to hire me back as, yes. I have my PERS check, but it's good to earn a little extra money."

Marie nodded. Some people just didn't want to retire, or couldn't afford to retire. She'd known both, through her mom and her coworkers. No matter what they did, they were all retired annuitants. "We could use it, at least until things work out - stabilize, I mean."

At least she had her mom. There was some stability right there. "Have you heard from Auntie Joan or Ginger?"

"No, on both counts," her mother said grimly. Her aunt had been a schoolteacher in southern California, her cousin, having changed majors so many times, was trying to catch up somewhere on the coast. Marie grimaced. She liked her aunt and didn't care for her cousin Ginger, but family was family. And Ginger was still family, no matter how much Marie felt like an uncultured, ignorant dolt whenever they dealt with each other. Ginger's attitude did not help.

The only thing that Marie had proved better at was making up her mind; a dual major, of course, because she couldn't choose between two majors, but still, she'd declared a major and stuck with it.

Besides, with those two majors, she made a perfect candidate for Library School, even though that hadn't been on her mind at the time.

"Shoot." Yeah, definitely missing the family, even the family that made her seem like a useless dolt.

"He'll also see what he can do on your end - I know you like the library, but you're on the payroll of the State, so you should get money faster."

"As long as that lasts," Marie leaned back against the wall. She hoped she'd continue getting paid, liked getting paid, but something might go wonky if things didn't stabilize. "It's good job experience, assuming anybody survives to serve as a job reference. And it'll look really good if and when I go to library school. Catherine, Angela, and Naoko are teaching me how to be a librarian - I'll be well-equipped."

And if everything shut down and they lost the other two, at least she and Naoko would be there. Assuming Naoko didn't die too. Maybe being from another universe made one immune - none of their new arrivals were showing any sign of sickness so far. But then again, the new folk hadn't been around all that long. She made a mental note to keep an eye on everyone, just to make sure they were safe and she wasn't going to lose them.

The next day was a Saturday, so she only worked half a day at the library. Catherine and Angela had decided to keep the library open for a few hours even on the weekends, to keep the library's goal of remaining a place for information. A smaller amount of librarians meant that they could spend more time working and keeping it open. "The city's going to owe us obscene amounts of overtime pay," Catherine joked weekly as she coughed. Marie nodded, inwardly afraid that they were going to lose Catherine. Angela was starting to not look very great either. Only she and Naoko looked fine.

"How's your little sister?" Marie heard Catherine ask Naoko between coughs.

"She's all right," Naoko responded. "I'm trying to get her to do housekeeping."

"Not working?" Catherine asked. "I thought that...."

"Yes, she does know how to do housekeeping, it's just that she doesn't think we'll be here that long. The only thing she's in favor of is keeping the place up for when the people get back. Then she'll do housekeeping."

Marie recalled that Japanese schoolchildren kept their schools up, and were at least expected to keep their rooms neat. Naoko's tone must have meant that her little sister knew how to do it but seemed like she didn't want to put up the effort to do so.

"You have a sister?" she asked, as politely as possible, given Naoko's tone.

"My little sister," Naoko said, "Is named Nezumi, and she arrived a day ago."

That seemed to be all that Naoko wanted to say. Marie wondered if it was just an issue of Nezumi's housekeeping skills, or if the sisters had other problems beyond that, like she had with her cousin. Somebody had lousy naming skills, though; if Marie recalled correctly, Nezumi's name meant "rat". But she wasn't going to ask Naoko on that one, not until the two resolved their problems.

"Ah," was all Marie said, and Naoko seemed to accept that as the end of the matter. The two of them went back to work, though there wasn't huge and huge amounts of it. Marie was handed a duster and told to dust the side rooms, including the fridge in the library's extremely tiny kitchen - well, sink, refrigerator, and microwave.

She'd just finished dusting said kitchen when an asian girl that she'd never seen before came in. From the way Naoko stiffened, the girl had to be the sister she'd mentioned earlier; they seemed to get along just as well as Marie and Ginger did.

The two stepped away to one corner of the library, as if to have some privacy. Naoko snarled something in a language that Marie had never heard. It was somewhat like swedish, but the flow was more dissonant, and she wasn't sure if that was the nature of the language or because of the attitude of the speaker. It didn't sound like Chinese or Korean, she was sure of that. It wasn't Japanese for sure. Marie had to wonder if this was the language that Naoko had promised to teach her. It sounded rough, though again, that could be because the words were being spoken in anger. When the other girl - Nezumi, Marie guessed - spoke back, her words were in the same rough tongue.

The argument went on for a few minutes before Nezumi stomped off out the library doors. Naoko continued to look annoyed, and Marie decided to steer clear of her. When the librarian calmed down a bit, Marie might broach the subject of what the language was, but not before. The last thing she needed was for Naoko to decide not to teach her the language in question, or at least enough to dabble in the language in question.

"Right," she said to herself, and that was that. She smiled as Det Owens came in, heading for the stacks, and then making a beeline in her direction.

"Who was the girl that just left?" he asked.

"We haven't been formally introduced," Marie said honestly, "but she's related to one of our other librarians. I think."

"Oh," Det said.

"Names are important things," Marie mused. Naoko and Nezumi, herself and Ginger, whatever source Det's name had come from, his name surely meant something. "Like you going by Det instead of D.M. How'd you end up dropping your nickname anyway?"

Det shrugged. "Mom and Dad named me to insult someone, so I didn't use it for a long time. When the person I was named after turned out to like me being named after them, I started using Det."

"Hm." She wondered if Nezumi was the girl's nickname. Surely that would make more sense, as she couldn't see Nezumi's parents deliberately giving her that name. A name she chose, for one reason or another. Nezumi might have had a strong nose, but she didn't look like a rat. At least Marie didn't think so.

"A penny for your thoughts," Det offered.

"I was just thinking of how names worked," Marie said. "Yours, Nezumi's, mine...."

"What does Nezumi mean?" Det asked. "You obviously know."

"If it means what I think it means," Marie said, "Then either her nickname or her given name means 'rat'. I sincerely hope that's not her given name...."

"That's a weird name," Det said. "But I'm sure whoever had their reasons."

"Um. I'm sure they had their reasons too," Marie said. She shook her head. "So, need help finding anything?"

"I just came in to find out if anybody had found out anything," Det said. "Mom and Dad went up the street to check out the stores up to the northeast."

Marie nodded. "I'd quite forgotten about them. There's a grocery store not that far up the line once you hit Freeport. Actually, it's on Freeport. There's two drug stores, a church, a used book business...."

She wondered if J. Crawford's was still open. If it was, she'd have to shop there. If it wasn't, she might have to see if they were coming back, or if she'd be having to find other ways to get books. She'd always liked J. Crawford's.

"Mom and Dad'll know," Det said with confidence. "They have a knack for finding people."

Marie nodded. "It'll be good if we can find somebody still in business." Somebody still had to be in business. Somebody. But the new people were starting to outnumber the old people. Okay, not really, but it felt like it. Or maybe it was just Marie's neighborhood. She should try some of the richer areas and see what they looked like. Maybe a weekend or even a weekday if she could take some time off from the library.

Of course, all that might be moot if the coworkers at her jobs kept disappearing. The few at her old employer were slowly dropping off just as two of the librarians seemed to be. She'd have to ask her mom, when her mom got a chance, to find out how the staffing looked statewide. She was betting not very good, and those were for areas that had not been, say, flooded like Blue Bay Harbor had been. She didn't even want to think about the state of San Francisco at the moment.

She probably should set up a map of Sacramento of some kind, maybe at the library or something, just so everything was coordinated. A good street map, nice and large. And then everybody could report what and who they found and how things were. Open businesses would be nice. Eventually, somebody could wander to the agricultural areas. That would be the next order of business. Her mom's contacts in the state could help, and the Owens, Disa and Keegan, and some of the others could find out in other ways. Mrs. Schultz had been looking for medical places, and Marie was also interested in knowing what was going on.

Marie pondered that, and also tried to figure out what would be useful in bringing such information together. Computers still worked, though the Internet was a bit tetchy. Still, one of the map services was probably still up; she could save maps of the area and print them to make a larger map that people could use for data points. A local directory might be nice too, she mused, when the population was stable enough to have one. That might be a while. She'd ask her mom if she found any coworkers living in the area. They could probably tell her about their neighbors too.

Heck, if the internet worked, there might be groups forming that kept track of such things, and all she had to do was keep in touch. If the internet went down, at least if she saved such things she'd have an idea. She made a mental note to check on that when she got home, or if the library computers cooperated and things were slow, maybe she or one of the librarians could do that. She'd talk to Catherine, who seemed to be in charge, about that.

In the meantime, at least the library kept going. And the librarians were there to help gather information. Librarians studied information science, the study of organizing and distributing of information, after all. Especially in the twenty-first century, books were not the total focus of the library, and information was. Books had merely been a source of information and entertainment.

After finishing the day, she got home and ran through her idea with her mom.

"It could work," her mother agreed. "You could start with a smaller street map, maybe also the map book."

"The Thomas Guide?" Marie asked, though it felt obvious. The Thomas book would give them larger maps, after all. "Of course, printing master map pages from the internet might work better. We could photocopy those and all that."

Her mom nodded in agreement. "That seems to be the easiest way."

Silently apologizing to the mapmakers who made the maps for online, Marie started grabbing maps from the internet. She found that if she grabbed the map graphics, she could save them instead of printing them. She then started annotating the Thomas Guide map pages onto them, changed her mind, and undid the changes. Thank goodness for using Photoshop Elements and its undo feature. She then changed her mind again, saved a pristine copy, and redid the map annotations.

She had about four map squares done by the time her mom cooked dinner, a simple spaghetti with sauce. They were being sparing on the butter, though her mom hoped Crystal would come back into operation. Since that was their local area dairy, Marie figured that she could eventually figure out where to go to ask if they were still in operation. Heck, she could probably find a phone number, either on the interenet or someplace else.

Making a resolution to have either her mother or somebody else call them to see if they answered, she took her spaghetti and began to eat. "How's the mapping going?" her mother asked.

"Good," she said between bites. "I wonder if Barnhill's is still open down on Florin. The parking lot was pretty deserted, but that may have been because few people are driving, or there to drive."

"Barnhill's or Sherry's," her mother said, mentioning their two favorite restaurants. Marie had to admit she liked the chain better, except when it came to omlettes. Barnhill's was way better with the omlettes, besides, they'd been eating there ever since the Denny's down on Freeport had closed down.

"You'd like to go out to eat?" Marie asked. Of course her mom did. She'd been cooking for the both of them, she would probably love to have something she didn't make. Marie had done some of her own cooking, but it was mostly when her mom was unavailable. A cook she was not. She was better at washing dishes.

"If something's open," her mom said. "Much as we'd like to hope something's open, the might all be going out of business."

"I'll see if Disa, Keegan, or the Owenses have been out that way," Marie said. "If not, I'll go out that way myself." That was a promise she intended to keep. After all, Barnhill's was only a few miles down the road, and Sherry's only a mile or two after that. Or maybe less. She wasn't sure.

"That sounds good. I've been thinking of going to church myself," her mother said. "Our church is too far away to walk, but there are others."

Marie nodded. "And maybe we'll find ways to reliably get downtown," Marie said. "Maybe the buses will still run. Kinda sorta. Then we can get to church." Not that going to church was a big thing to Marie, but it was the church that she'd grown up in, her mother had been - was - in the choir, and her grandfather's artwork was still there. It was scary to think that the church, shrinking as it was, would get even smaller. She wondered if she should see if she could move into one of the rooms. But that would mean leaving the library behind.

Maybe she didn't want to do that. Besides, the church was big enough that she'd probably go out of her mind with every little creak. And the only apartment really was the custodian's, a little tiny one near the ladies' robing room and the nursery.

Was the nursery even still in operation? The church had leased the nursery off years ago, after Marie had hit adulthood, but she still missed the place. She had no idea of what was upstairs really anymore, hadn't been upstairs in years. Maybe they'd fixed that room that the doves had moved into, the room upstairs from one of her classrooms. Or maybe that had been one of her classrooms, gone to decay. It wasn't like the church had hordes of money, not with the parishioners dying before new younger families could move in, even before everything that had happened.

A lot of things were probably going to decay if the population didn't stabilize. The only good thing were the "immigrants" from other dimensions, like the folks helping her out. The world might grow again... but it would definitely never be the same. If she and her mom were lucky, new vehicles would replace cars, making them able to travel more, even to downtown if not farther. Maybe someone would restart Amtrak if it collapsed, enabling rail travel around the country. And jet planes... someone would find a solution.

Her local neighborhood was definitely a place to start. She'd lucked out with the current crop of neighbors, the new ones. They all wanted to make a home in the neighborhood, and all seemed happy - or at least accepting - of being there.

Marie hoped they'd stay, and build new bonds and make a neighborhood again. Funny, she hadn't cared much about the neighbors when she'd been living in the place before, but now that the world was nearly deserted, she wanted to have neighbors. Didn't want to be alone.

She was amazed at the amount of socialness that implied, the need to be social. Or maybe it was because she wanted them to need her and yet not need her. Needed to be needed, and yet needed a social life as well. It made a wacky time at the office.

Knowing she wasn't alone, that she had people to take care of and to take care of her really helped. Sure, the others could have found each other on their own, but she was the one that got the Owens family settled, and the others had followed, more or less.

But all of that for later. She had a day off from the library, and she was looking forward to a day of rest and quiet. And doing whatever needed to be done.

As it turned out, that included copying more maps to save for later, annotating them, and then printing the annotated ones. She'd discuss the map plan with the librarians on how best to implement things at the library; that seemed the most logical thing to do. Her mother was organized, but the librarians were more so. At least on the information end.

She grinned. Librarians as the movers and shakers of the new society. That would definitely be against the stereotype.

Taking a bicycle down to the grocery stores a few miles away from her, Marie repeated the IOUs. She loaded her cart, and afterwards her bike, with necessities, including powdered milk and preserved food. She knew her mom hated the powdered milk, but until someone could find out if Crystal was still running, powdered milk it was. Teas, too. Peanut butter, banana chips, spaghetti, and so on. Some thing she got for her mom, some for herself.

After all, unless she found a landlord besides her mom, or for some bizarre reason the world got to the point where who owned what property didn't matter anymore, she'd be living in her mom's spare bedroom for quite a while. She did know where she'd want to move if that turned out to be the case; there was a duplex or halfplex practically across from the apartment complex Disa and Keegan lived in. Heck, there were a lot of places one could live in, if one could find a key or break in.

Something that was unimaginable only three months before was scarily enough becoming a possibility. But then again, she'd had to break into stores, or walk into unlocked stores, in order to try to pay for her groceries. The fire station across the street from Disa and Keegan was deserted; Marie had to wonder what kind of police force Sacramento still had.

If it had any, since everybody seemed to be dropping like flies except for the new immigrants, herself, and her mother. Of course, her mother surviving was a good thing. That meant her aunt and her cousin had better chances of survival as well, if she remembered her genetics correctly. At least she hoped. Genetics in school had been a long time ago, and science in college consisted of an astronomy class and a short-term class where her most memorable memory was taking a low-alcohol cider recipe and ending up with the highest-proof alcohol in the class. In other words, it had been a long time since she had dealt with anything more than how she had inherited her blood type. She was O+, her mother had been A+, she didn't know about her dad.

She made a mental note to ask Dr. Schultz about blood transfusions and typing everybody in their neighborhood, if they could be typed. She had to wonder if Mr. Owens' blood could be typed, but she was sure everybody else's could be. Maybe Dr. Schultz could figure out how to type even nonhuman blood; She'd pretty much said that she'd dealt with aliens before.

Okay, maybe not Mr. Owens' kind, but Marie was hoping that Dr. Schultz's experience was more than enough to make up for it.

She made a note to herself to ask the doctor, and then headed home.

"Did you get everything?" her mother asked.

"Think so," she said, holding up the bagged groceries. She'd had to do them herself, and she wasn't sure she was cut out to do that. "I've got to get two more out of the cargo rack."

Her mom took the grocery bags from her, and she went back to get the other two bags. Her mother had the groceries mostly away by the time she brought in the other two. It was a smooth movement that her mother had down, something that never ceased to amaze her, and so she felt awkward putting the other two bags away.

Okay, maybe not Mr. Owens' kind, but Marie was hoping that Dr. Schultz's experience was more than enough to make up for it.

She made a note to herself to ask the doctor, and then headed home.

"Did you get everything?" her mother asked.

"Think so," she said, holding up the bagged groceries. She'd had to do them herself, and she wasn't sure she was cut out to do that. "I've got to get two more out of the cargo rack."

Her mom took the grocery bags from her, and she went back to get the other two bags. Her mother had the groceries mostly away by the time she brought in the other two. It was a smooth movement that her mother had down, something that never ceased to amaze her, and so she felt awkward putting the other two bags away.

When everything was done, the two of them settled with glasses of iced tea, her mom's usual strong brew. Marie could never make the tea strong enough for her mother without dumping a quarter of the bottle in by accident; her mother, likewise, had never really gotten how to make iced tea the way Marie liked it. So Marie got used to overly-strong iced tea.

"Hopefully we'll get paid soon," Marie said conversationally. "I'd like to replace the IOUs I've been putting with actual money."

"I do too," her mom said. "I wish I could go to the grocery stores myself, but since we're trying to save gas, I guess you have to do it."

"It's really weird how the world changed," Marie said. "Remember our old routine on Sundays? Go to church, go out to eat, go grocery shopping, maybe see grandma and grandpa?" That had been in the last few years before her grandparents had passed away, when they couldn't go to church or things like that.

"I remember," her mother said. "Has anybody been to Raley's yet?"

"I'm not sure, I think the Owens family was going to check out that way," Marie said. "And how many years have we been going to Raley's?"

"Many," her mother said. "I think you grew up in the toy aisle."

Marie blushed a little at that. "Anyway," she said, "I miss our old routine. I missed it when I moved to Blue Bay Harbor."

"I missed you too," her mother said. It occurred to her that her mother had done much the same things - except maybe going out to lunch - as she had before Marie had moved away.

"It's really strange how things have changed," Marie mused. "Especially ever since everything happened. Doesn't it seem strange to you that we now have to break into stores to shop? Or at least I do. And a bunch of our new arrivals moved into vacant housing. I don't know how the grocery places are going to handle things, but I bet the owners of those places aren't going to be too happy."

"I know," her mother said, with her tone suggesting that she'd rather have done anything but have her daughter go out and do what she was doing. "I don't like this either."

Marie gave her mother a wry grin. "We're bound to uphold the laws of California," she said. "After all, we're State Employees." Of course, there were even some laws that she wasn't great at obeying. Remembering to pay use tax was one of them. She saw the point of the use tax law, but she was always afraid of getting herself into the Board of Equalization's system when she could barely remember which things she bought from out of state.

It was always something she'd been embarrassed by, and why she'd always been more sympathetic to people who tried their best to pay their taxes and just failed. Some of her best call center experiences had been people trying to make things right, like the quadriplegic investment banker down in San Diego. He'd had bum advice, had gone to get things fixed, didn't scream like so many had when he'd gotten penalized. And in return, Marie had done her darndest to make the whole thing as easy on him as possible, even when she wasn't able to waive his penalties. There was a reason why he'd been her favorite customer, and why they'd kept in touch up until Marie had moved to Blue Bay Harbor.

"At least as best we can," Marie added after a moment. "I mean." She and her mom had been law-abiding citizens, her aunt, while fairly law-abiding herself, had no problem taking... creative shortcuts on things.

"As soon as you or one of the others finds a grocery store that's open, go there," her mom said. Marie nodded.

"Believe me, that would be my choice too." She really wanted to find a grocery store that she could go into like before. Figuring how to force sliding automatic doors open was not what she'd ever wanted to learn. "I want to go pay people that are there and not break in to stores in order to eat. And have money to pay those stores with." That was a big one. After all, her mother had taught her wrong from right, and even leaving IOUs at empty stores bothered her. The new arrivals might have less qualms, not having jobs for the most part, but she and her mom did.

Of course, maybe the new folks would take over things. It would help. The Owens could run the grocery store, and some of the others could assist them.Marie had a bad feeling that the original inhabitants of her world were going to be few and far between. At least there were new arrivals; the world didn't feel totally deserted.

"I'll see what I can do," her mom said, as if her mom was doing anything except sorting out unemployment check accounting. Which there were probably far fewer claims for, given that people seemed to be getting to being not there any more. She wondered if there was fraud going on, now that people were dying. Probably, unfortunately.

There had always been fraud, taking stuff that didn't belong to get ahead in life. That was probably why what she was doing bothered her so much, even if she was eventually going to pay for the groceries. IOUs were all fine and good for small personal loans where the loaner knew who they were loaning to, or in an environment of trust like buying snacks at the office. Not something one wanted applied to the local grocery store. Well, at least if one didn't know the owner personally. If the owner chose to extend credit to one, then one was justified in writing an IOU, but if they didn't, then it seemed dishonest. The same with the houses and apartments the others inhabited; as far as she knew, even Naoko wasn't there by permission of the owner, unless it belonged to a relative of Catherine's or Angela's. That was possible, since she hadn't asked.

It left Marie in a rather awkward situation. Did survival outweigh taking the food? Was the fact that she had done work for pay negate the fact that she'd taken things without paying for them? She had a feeling it wasn't a question to be answered in a day, or even in a week, and that she would probably come to a different conclusion than any of her neighbors. Even Mr. Owens, who seemed scrupulously honest to Marie, could have a different opinion.

She vaguely remembered an episode of an old show, "Werewolf", where the protagonist had been taken captive by a man intent on living forever by being turned into one. When the protagonist objected to passing on his curse, the man had marveled at running into a moral werewolf. Or at least that's how Marie remembered it. She probably still had taped episodes somewhere.

Just like the lead show's character, she was a moral woman. She didn't drink, she didn't do drugs, she didn't steal. And now she was forced to leave IOUs. How she had fallen, like her world had fallen.

And she'd do anything she could to bring it back.

"So, would the room be available?" she asked Catherine the next day. The whole group might be a bit crowded in the conference room, but she hoped not.

Catherine shrugged. "Nobody's obviously booking it," she said. "Sure, you can use the room for the meeting."

"Thanks!" Marie had decided to hold the organizing meeting in the library's bigger conference room. She was sure many of the others would agree to survey things, and then they could start figuring out where to go from there. Finding working police or fire would be a good thing. Her mother would have a clue on government services available in a day or two; by Friday Marie could have things organized. She hoped.

She mentally counted the people that she knew would probably come. The Owenses for sure, the Schultzes (at least Dr. Schultz, maybe not her daughter), Disa and Keegan, Greer and Michael, Lucas and Teresa, and probably Catherine, Angela, and Naoko. She rather doubted Nezumi would come; from what little she'd heard and seen, this wasn't Nezumi's 'thing'.

With her included, that would be fourteen people, more if Marianne or Nezumi showed up, or anybody else that was interested.

That taken care of, she returned to her duties. Lucas and Teresa were both there, talking quietly, at a level that was quite tolerable. Marie was torn between the library being a vibrant place and a place people could hear their own thoughts. Come to think of it, Det was the youngest person she'd seen since she stepped off the train, and he was twelve.

She took the return cart from near where Naoko was working, returning materials to their shelves. This was at least a distraction. She otherwise was wondering what good she could do in a library with a rapidly diminishing population to service to, and wondered if she could get a full-time State job.

On the other hand, with Catherine and now Angela looking shaky, then she might still be needed, especially if the library was stuck with herself and Naoko. Even if there wasn't a whole lot really going on, the library was still a place of gathering and information.

And if for some reason their population - and she sincerely hoped it did - grew so that meetings needed to be moved, there was always the lawn. Or the community center across the street that sat dark and silent.

She asked Catherine about it.

"Haven't seen a person," Catherine confirmed. "Everybody's come here, not there, as a place to gather."

"If we needed to use it eventually?" Marie asked, gazing out through the library's magnificent bank of windows.

"I know someone who knew someone who used to work there," Catherine said. "Or rather, I did. As it happens, I've been thinking the same thing, so I... got the keys to the community center."

Marie had to wonder if Catherine had doing some breaking and entering herself. Marie couldn't be the only one breaking into places in order to get things done. She'd have to start asking discreetly about it; she suspected that she definitely wasn't.

"Thanks," she said. The other woman's blush confirmed to Marie that Catherine was embarrassed by how she'd gotten possession of the keys.

She went back to her work, keeping the place clean as needed. Because the library was so slow, so went the time. She finally left the library and headed home, hoping her mom had some news on the State side.

The door was locked out of long habit, and with just as long habit, Marie unlocked it, went inside, and locked it again. Dropping the key in the basket where she normally left it - she'd lose it otherwise - she stepped into the kitchen, not seeing her mother in the living or dining rooms. Her mother wasn't there, so she took a peek into the laundry and back bathrooms. Okay, she didn't really peek, just merely glanced down the hallway and saw the the bathroom door was open and the room unlit.

She peeked into the garage too, seeing the car. Her mom was going to take it out, so if it was in, so should she be.

Not seeing her mother on the first floor (admittedly, she hadn't checked the coat closet yet, but the image of her mother standing in the tiny room was ludicrous), she walked up the stairs, nearly tripping over Chocolate, who was doing her best impression of a fur mop right in the middle of the stairway. "Oof," she said, recovering and noting that her mom wasn't in the solar.

"I'm in here," her mother said. Her mother had always been that way, not always remembering to answer when Marie came in. Marie peeked into the second-floor library to find her mom working on bills at the desk, Spook in the cat furniture behind her.

Or at least Marie presumed they were bills. Maybe it was take-home work. That would make sense. "How'd the day go?" she asked.

"It's going to take me a little time to figure things out," her mother admitted. "But UI seems to be still running.

"Did you see any police downtown?" Marie asked. "I haven't seen any." She leaned up against the library closet, a glorified coat closet.

"No, but I did get a misdirected call from someone in the Highway Patrol, she says they're still in business and so are the local police." Her mother continued working on whatever.

"That's good. It's also good we haven't needed them. They as short-staffed as we are?" she asked.

"She didn't say," her mom told her, "But I think everybody's hurting. You should go and ask around again; I'm sure with your background you could go full-time."

"I'm just happy if I can get a paycheck for the hours I have worked," Marie said. "We're just lucky electronic funds transfer still works and so do ATMs." For the moment, at least. Marie wondered what would happen if they broke down. All of them. The entire ATM network.

She'd really be out of money, that was for sure. She didn't really want to withdraw her paycheck out of the bank, even if not everything was being charged (or rendered) anymore. That brought up images of past eras when people had done just that, taking money out of the banks and hiding it in their mattresses.

"So am I," her mom said, straightening the papers and putting them away in her briefcase. It wasn't like Marie wanted to look at them after all. Once one had access to confidential information, once took the responsibility of protecting that confidential information. And one was likewise not wanting to see other peoples' information.

She'd always hated doing tech support for her attendance clerk, even if the attendance clerk was careful not to expose her to anybody's information. She was glad that most of her clerks had not even allowed her into their cubicles; the last one was an exception, especially given Marie's knowledge of computers.

"Worst comes to worst, take it out?" Like there were lots of places open to spend it on. Her last splurge had been the bike. She'd then pay off the groceries, get current on those accounts. And hope that she got paid for the library stuff, though Catherine thought she would. Her and Naoko, who would probably appreciate being paid.

Of course, Naoko might appreciate not having to deal with her sister hour after hour. It reminded her of her mom's story about the retired annuitant who worked because it got her away from her family for a few hours each day.

"Yes," her mother said. Neither of them had lived through the Depression, and neither of them wanted to live through it, given her mother's folks had. She couldn't remember clearly how they'd dealt with it, other than her grandfather keeping fires lit in orange groves during the cold nights. Her grandfather had done some interesting things before settling down and graduating from seminary.

Of course, he'd done some interesting things after, too, judging from his self-published tales. Having the FBI or whatever on you because someone thought your sermons were too communist had to be something to talk about. Getting death threats because one didn't support gambling machines and was suing to ban them was another. Or maybe that was a vote. No, it was a court case. She was sure she could look it up online.

"Hope it doesn't come to that," Marie said. "I take it tax is still working if we're paying UI."

"Tax is still very much working," her mother said, getting up. "You should see if you can get a job there; you know the screens."

"Just as long as it doesn't involve call center work or collections," Marie said. "I have no problem adjusting returns upon request, or processing forms."

Her mother nodded. "Cashiering is probably still in business. So is Adjustment Unit."

"Oh, good." She'd interviewed for Cashiering a few years before, and had actually been forwarded there a month. She'd enjoyed it, with not having to deal with the public. Like most people who dealt with the public, she had her own horror stories about people who were entitled to everything, and entitled to everything right that moment. Never mind that a lot of adjustments were batched overnight even when Marie was still doing adjustments.

That was the fun of working on a twenty-year-old database written in Cobol and patched so many times it wasn't funny. She'd shared a bus for a while with a lady who lived down the street from them, who had worked in Adjustment Unit. That lady, unfortunately, seemed no longer to be at the address. Marie wondered if she'd moved, disappeared, or died. "Everything's down to a skeleton crew," her mom said as she stepped out of the library and down to the stairs, avoiding Chocolate along the way. "They want everyone back."

Marie nodded. "I don't blame them." She followed her mother down the stairs. "I'm going to make mashed potatoes, want some?"

"Sure," her mother said absently. She was still probably calculating figures in her head. Apparently she trusted Marie to cook without burning the mashed potato mix. Of course, Marie could actually cook without killing herself, and had for quite a few years, ever since her mom had gotten her a book called "Help! My Apartment has a Kitchen!" Plus, she had taken Home Ec in Junior High, though she didn't do too well. She could, however, still sew.

So, Marie got the mix out and made mashed potatoes for both of them. Her mother, as usual, made the iced tea. She recounted her day at both workplaces, and the fact that the community center would be available for the meeting. She mused at the fact that she was arranging meetings and things like that, something that would have been unimaginable to her extremely shy teenage self twenty years before. Heck, even ten years ago she wouldn't have been arranging any meetings.

"Maybe I can break up the groups into doing sections, take a map section each and start notating it, then adding the information to the main map," she mused.

"That's a good idea," her mother said, a supervisor who had been supervising most of Marie's life; Marie smiled, trusting her mom to give her honest, good feedback on her ideas. They'd clashed, of course; her mother was fairly neat while Marie was a slob, and she was her mother's despair when it came to clothes and grooming, but Marie got along with her mom. Most of the time, anyway.

Marie resolved to be a less picky eater and less of a slob. Of course, she'd been resolving to do that for years, and it hadn't made a dent in things. The last thing she needed was to have a fall out with her mom; while she loved to have her own space, she'd missed her mom when she'd moved to Blue Bay Harbor.

Though she had enjoyed living in a town where the beach was not that far away. Okay, somewhat far away. Far away enough that when the tsunami had hit she'd still had a place to live, even if her workplace had been downtown and therefore under water. Years of living on a flood plain had left her prepared, though for a different kind of flood. A river flood, not a tsunami.

She made a mental note to remind people that even though the Corp of Engineers had recently strengthened the levees along the river, that the whole area was still flood plain. She also made a mental note to go down and see the river; there had to be quite a few access points besides the bike trail at Captain's table and the one just before 43rd and River's Edge merged.

But that was for leisure time. Saturday, after her time at the library, or Sunday, if she wasn't too busy. By then, she'd have arranged the whole thing about mapping and surveying the area. Well, surveying, since they had maps. That was going to be an enormous venture, but it would be good. If they could find the police community liaison or whatever, they could share their compiled data.

Wait, wasn't there a police station over on Freeport, a little walk in the other direction than the Owenses had looked at? She was pretty sure there was. She, or one of the others, would have to check it out. She privately hoped that either Disa and Keegan or Lucas and Teresa would check it out. Good folks though they were, the Owens family looked odd, with Mr. Owens looking asian with green hair, Mrs. Owens being a brown-haired caucasian, and Det being a young black male.

Yeah, probably a good idea to have somebody else do it. Maybe she should go. Of course, that might mean doing the rest of Freeport down to Florin. Hmmm.

On the other hand, if the Owens family wanted to do that, then she was hardly going to complain. They had their right to, after all, and it might not occur to them that their family was at all unusual.

She made a mental note to figure it out later. Like when people actually appeared at the meeting and volunteered.

In the meantime, she had a workday to get through, and the work should at least be quiet. She'd make a stop at Human Resources, check to see what they had. She expected it might be handwritten now, not enough people to do the approval chain.

Or maybe there were. After all, people were trying to restore the status quo; the descriptions on the boards might still be printed. She should try State Personnel Board, since that was about across the street or so. Maybe they'd have something useful.

Maybe they were even staffed. Maybe there was hope for things. Of course, some of that hope was based on the police and fire departments still being in existence.

She made a bunch of notes on a notepad she'd found while cleaning up her closet a little. Notes about the police department and finding the fire department, about the Owens family and arranging the survey and the information needed. That resulted in her drafting up a sample form. Everybody so far seemed to be able to speak and read English, that was not a problem.

With all that in mind, she went to bed.

The week passed by quickly, her mother providing information, as did the others. By the time Friday evening rolled around, Marie was ready to give the information. Beyond ready, really. Ready enough to be practically bouncing in place and driving everybody crazy as she set the tables up.

Okay, driving the three librarians crazy, since they were the only ones there. Naoko had increasingly looked like she'd swallowed a lemon, and Catherine made jokes about putting a sedative in her tea. Angela just smiled angelically and took some aspirin for her headache.

"Sorry," she apologized, and twice to Naoko. "I guess I'm a bit excited."

That had to be the understatement of the century, but Naoko gave a brief, quick nod and seemed to let it pass. Marie guessed that she was acting too much like Nezumi, though she really hadn't seen much of Nezumi, certainly not enough to guess what kind of personality she had. Marie had to guess that it was "perky".

She finished setting things up and waited for the rest of the group to file into the library and thus into the conference room. The only people who were there at the moment were, of course, herself and the librarians. But others started arriving, first the Owenses, then Teresa and Lucas, Disa and Keegan, Mrs. Schultz, and her mom. Greer and Michael came last, and the only two that seemed not to have come were Marianne Schultz and Naoko's sister Nezumi.

"Thanks all for coming here tonight." That was the easy part. "I wanted to call this meeting because we needed to pool our resources. All of us have, to one extent or another, been exploring the area around us or otherwise gathering information. But it's been disorganized, and so with the kind permission of the librarians here, I've put together something that will save us from duplicating effort."

She paused, trying to think of what to say next. "I've set up a chart on the whiteboard here," she said, motioning behind her. "What we should do is make notes whenever we're done datagathering for the day or the week or the month and indicate what we've found out."

A murmur of agreement filled the small room, and several people seemed to be cursing themselves for not thinking of the same thing sooner.

"Now, the important things are grocery stores and other stores that carry food, preferably nonperishable. It would be good to find out if we have police; there's a station down on Freeport off of Fruitridge. Whoever makes a visit to that can also check on the food store - Oto's - in the same complex." If they hadn't completely moved their operations to near Raley's. They could have. She hoped not. "See if they're open."

"I'll go," Naoko volunteered, raising her hand and causing Marie to blink out of surprise. Naoko hadn't shown any interest in doing the data collecting, just the data sorting. Which was one of the reasons Marie wanted the chart/map at the library; the librarians were good with information.

"Okay, that takes care of that. This is my mom, Nancy Brown," Marie said, waving in the general direction of her mother. She'd never figured out the pointing thing besides it being rude. Better to not offend those with a similar background.

"I'm sure I haven't met most of you, though I've heard of you through Marie." Her mother's voice was friendly but cool, the voice that knew how to get through a meeting when one was the focus of attention. "I'm Nancy Brown. I hope you'll introduce yourselves to me if we haven't met, so I can get to know you.

"Marie asked me to bring in the government perspective. I retired from working for the State of California a few years ago. I've just gone back as a retiree to help them work through some accounting problems. I'm sure the first things on your mind, besides food and shelter, are re-establishment of services. While I work in State government, I've heard that the City and County of Sacramento are trying to get everything organized; it's just difficult when people keep dying.

"I second the need to check in on the local police. It looks like there are at least some garbage trucks; my trash was taken away on Wednesday. That's not our usual day, but I can't be picky. The garbage collectors may have been requested to track every place that had a garbage bin out for removal, so they may know where at least some of us live. I think I can safely say, however, that if you live in an apartment complex, they're not going to know you're there."

Disa and Keegan nodded, looking all serious. "I'm sure we'll be picked up in a census somehow," Disa said. "In the meantime, I'm all for compiling the data and having it ready for the police or the city or whatever."

"That's a good point," Marie replied. "Maybe we should compile the data first and then go to the police." She pondered. "And speaking of Oto's, if someone shows you how to break in - if they're not open, that is - Tanaka-san, could you inventory that and tell us what's useful there?"

"Certainly," Naoko shifted as if she hadn't expected Marie to ask her anything - and not only that, but addressing her more politely than she did in the library. Marie wondered how rude she and the others seemed to Naoko. Probably very rude, though some consideration had to be given that some of them were Americans, and they were in America. As far as she knew, everybody was from Earth, and apart from Mr. Owens, all human.

"Good." She didn't need to add more to that. "Anybody else have their preferences? There's a large block of areas to cover in the local area." She knew that sounded awkward, but there wasn't much she could do about it. She wondered if it was legal to walk on freeways now, or at least that the CHP had way too much to do to worry about it.

"We'll continue to cover the southern area," Disa said. "I can make a rapid survey to start with, and then start working on detail."

"We'll work on Freeport," Mr. Owens said. "Except, of course, for Oto's."

Naoko nodded at that last comment. "When you go to survey the street, take me along. I could use some help inventorying that store."

Mr. Owens gave her a brief nod, and the rest of them continued on. Marie was pleased to see there were no arguments, just cooperation in figuring out who went where and what everybody could do to help others. In a strange way, the group was like survivors of a naturual catastrophe who were helping each other out to put the group - and the city - back on their feet.

It was a good feeling.

She liked her new neighbors. They might have come from different backgrounds, way different backgrounds for some of them, but they'd taken to her Sacramento and her world as if they'd been born there. And considering only four people in the meeting had been born in Marie's world, including Marie herself, that was pretty damn amazing.

"Why are you even bothering with this, when we should be looking for ways back into our own worlds?" The voice came from the open doorway. Marie wondered if anybody had bothered to lock the library doors. Apparently not. Part of her, always paranoid, told her that they should have locked them, to keep them safe. The other part of her pointed out that it would have been rude had anybody wanted to join them.

Okay, all of her was trying to calm down the fight-or-flight mode she was in. Step one, action. Step two, thought. Step three, emotion. Step four, logical reasons for. Step five, logical reasons against. Step six, modified emotion.

The voice belonged to Nezumi, Naoko's sister. Okay. Her unexpected arrival had caused Marie to worry, because she'd come in unexpectedly. Now, the library doors had been unlocked, so anybody could have come in, and as she'd reminded herself, they'd probably been unlocked for that reason. For that matter, it wasn't like she was alone; she had a whole bunch of people there. But the new arrival could have been a stranger. So, nothing to panic about. Just Nezumi, the sister that made Naoko grit her teeth.

"Because," Naoko said, frowning and getting up, moving towards the door as if to protect all of them from her younger sister, "We may be here long-term. It makes no sense to look for a gateway when one may never come. Better to settle here than to worry about something that may never exist."

"You say that," Nezumi said to her, "Because you don't want to go back home."

Marie had to blink at that. She could see others averting their eyes, being neutral. Some were staring with fascinated horror at the argument. She wondered why they were having this argument in English, when the girls' native language was, Marie presumed, Japanese, and they had this whole other alien-sounding language that they also seemed to speak.

Maybe they didn't want to be rude themselves and were deliberately including the english-speaking rest of the group into the argument.

Naoko countered in the growly language Marie had previously hear her speak to Nezumi in. the language was rough and harsh by nature, Marie decided that it wasn't because the small samples that she'd heard were the two arguing with each other. After all, Swedish sounded sing-songy to her ears even when people were arguing in it, why shouldn't this language. Probably even people being gushy with each other and so on sounded like they were having a fight, much less those who were actually having a fight.

Nezumi replied in the same language, and then added in English, "It's no secret you ran away from home. I've known that for years, why shouldn't these people know that you ran away from those who loved you and still love you?"

"My life is none of their business, and none of yours," Naoko answered in English. She growled an additional response to Nezumi in their shared language, and Marie wondered if that was the equivalent of "back off."

"We should go home, to people who care for us and take care of us," Nezumi said to the room at large. I'm sure that we could get the rest of you legal in our world as well. Think about it."

Then she walked off, and Marie could hear the library door shut behind her.

"Okay," Marie said. "Now that we've had objections to the whole thing, how about we just double check our plans, and then if something perchance happens so that we can go to Tanaka-san and Tanaka-san's dimension, worry about that later?"

"Works for us," Mrs. Owens – Danielle – said. "I see her point too, but I like being here, and I enjoy the chance to be at the beginning of a community."

"Yeah, why not?" Disa piped up. "It's a whole new world. And the better we know what's going on, the better."

The others chimed in their consent, not seeming to take Nezumi's thought seriously. If anybody wanted to go home, they didn't mention it to Marie.

Marie finally wrapped up the meeting with all the plans together, and with a little help, put everything away. She left the map copies - the ones she'd printed out - with Catherine for distribution if needed before she got in.

"That went well, I think," she said to her mom after they got home. "I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out."

"You did fine," her mother said, hugging her. "Running your first meeting is tough."

"Well, I have moderated meetings before," Marie said modestly. "Running a meeting from scratch is tough, but it came out well."

Her mother nodded. "Eventually, you'll learn how to deal with disruptions like that girl's. I take it that was Nezumi?"

"Yep, Nezumi Tanaka," Marie answered. "We've never been formally introduced, I only really know her through Naoko. Did you find the language they spoke interesting?"

Her mother spoke several languages, her father three. Marie had never been good at them, and therefore spoke one with a smattering of several others.

"Yes, I did," her mother replied. "Do you know what it is?" She relaxed on the couch as Marie took the chair.

"No," Marie said, leaning back. "I think Naoko is going to teach me, but I don't know what it is yet... and I'm afraid to bug her in case I bug her too much and she decided not to teach me. It's not anything from the Latin or Germanic families, that's for sure. Not Japanese either. It sounded to me like it's too growly for human voices, and yet those two were speaking it just fine."

"I agree," her mother said. "It would be interesting to know the evolution and the language tree."

Marie smiled at her mother. This was the person she'd gotten her love of languages from. Or maybe it was the pure envy of having parents who could speak several languages when she could only speak her native one. Her mother had studied the germanic languages extensively when she was in grad school, and she'd always encouraged Marie to try to learn. Marie just wasn't very good at it.

Her mother had always wanted her to learn, expected her to learn. When she was in high school, it wasn't "if you are going to college", it was "when you go to college". Marie was sure that her mom would at least try to help if she'd started her quest to get her Master's in Library and Information Science like she kept planning. And then putting off. Marie was really good at putting those kinds of things off.

Now she might not have a chance to do so. Not until things got established again, or if she found a place that would take her and her mom.

Wait. Why was she thinking that way? There was no way off the world, none that she knew of, Nezumi's desires notwithstanding. She had to keep focused, stay focused, keep everything together. If they found a way to recreate society, fine. If there was some way off world to a world where everything wasn't dying, fine.

But Marie knew that Nezumi's words had struck something in her heart, something not easily forgotten.

"It would indeed. I'll tell you when I find out. Because you know I have to." Boy, did she ever have to. About the language that Naoko and Nezumi shared, about everything.

"You have to know everything, you always have," her mother replied. "Even when you were little, you had to know everything. I'm surprised you didn't go into Library School right after college."

"So was I," Marie admitted. "I guess I needed a chance to recover... or at least pay off my student loans." It had taken her years to pay off her student loans, only finishing ten years later, thanks to some deferrals.

"I remember," her mother said. "And I wanted you to get a State job, too."

Of course her mother had wanted her to get a State job. She guessed a lot of State employee parents wanted their kids to have financial security and job security. Of course, given what jobs Marie had held during her time with the State, she'd often wished that they'd need her less. Much less. Like zero less. Like, out of a job. Opponents of the state bureaucracy charged that a bureaucracy was seeking to expand, but that wasn't true. If State employees had one fault, they wanted to do better for the people they served. She was sure that many State employees would be glad to be out of jobs and jobhunting once they weren't needed any more.

"I know. I guess it took a while, huh?" Marie's first job had been in the private sector. Well, actually, her first job was with her college, as a student assistant, then that first job in the private sector, then those odd jobs, then the State. Even call center work had seemed like a good thing at that point.

She'd liked her co-workers there at the job. She just wished the callers and the calls hadn't worn her down. It was enough to burn out a normal person, much less one who would be diagnosed with anxiety disorder. She had yet to tell her mother how desperate she'd gotten for a while; moving to Blue Bay Harbor, while stressful, had also been a relief. She'd liked her new co-workers too, and the environment was so much less stressful.

And now Marie was back home. Back home with all the fun and confusion of being home. Plus, running neighborhood meetings. And job hunting. And watching the world end.

Okay, not quite the last, but quite feeling it.

Yeah, Nezumi's little outburst had definitely rattled her. She wanted to go to a place where everybody worked, where she could be anonymous, quiet Marie once more. Not "I am coordinating the survey of half the area I grew up in" Marie. Leadership was her mom's thing, not hers.

Not much that she could do about it at that point, she reminded herself. Someone had to run things, and worry about fantasies later. She hoped. She knew she was going to obsess over getting to go somewhere else, she knew it. So she'd just not have to.

She and her mom worked on dinner companionably. It was a good one, her mom was a good cook as usual. At least they had food to eat, which was excellent.

After washing up, and taking care of other things, Marie buried herself in a book and immersed herself in the world of Harry Potter.

The next day passed relatively fast, or at least the State job did. Marie was offered a job over at the form-processing division, keying in tax forms by hand. Something had happened to the scanners during the first wave, and so IBM and whoever were still trying to fix the problem for the State. This has been going on for three months, so Marie didn't think it would be fixed any time soon. Of course, the whole thing going on with IBM is that they were probably losing employees just as much as everybody else was. Certainly there weren't tons and tons of returns, but they still had to be processed. In a way, it was heartening to know that there were forms to process and therefore people sending them in.

She bet that the people who were sending the forms in were either doing it on automatic, being very conscientious, or one of the big payroll companies was doing it for them. She hadn't heard any gossip about ADP or Paychex not being in service.

Marie hoped those wouldn't go out of business; somewhere in her files was a paycheck stub with the Paychex label, from a job she'd had before coming to the State. She'd discovered it while looking through some old stuff, and had put it in her records. Paychex hadn't meant anything to her back then, but she'd dealt with its reps enough that she knew about it now.

Changing jobs was very informal, such a change from the paperwork of olden days. That was one thing she didn't miss, altough funnily enough she'd take HR paperwork as a sign of going back to normal. A little bit of paperwork later, and she was processing returns, looking at the addresses in each, in awe. There were, of course, a fair amount from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. But the fact that she still saw addresses in towns like Gualala and Hayfork, small communities up north of Sacramento – at least Hayfork was, she often misplaced Gualala ever since she'd talked to someone from there – made her feel better.

Heck, she was almost over the embarassment of relocating Big Bear Lake to the other side of the state and almost sending the wrong information to the wrong location. But it all made her feel better. Made her hope that there would continue to be reports from those towns. From all those towns. Heck, she was sure she'd see one from Blue Bay Harbor eventually if she kept at it. Somebody still had to be alive in her former town. And there had been reports from Sacramento, too, though no address that she recognized. Probably other areas. Too bad she couldn't use that data other than to cheer her up, because she had sworn her oath and she was not about to break it and reveal confidential details. There lay the slippery slope of problem leading to her getting fired, and she so didn't want to go there. She wanted to work for twenty more years, and retire. Heck, everything might have gone back to normal by then.

She would by then be back to her normal, moral self where she was not breaking into markets in order to buy stuff to eat. At least payday was coming up in a day or so, hopefully, on both jobs. She'd find out then who was able still to pay paychecks.

And not Paychex, she thought, grinning at the deliberate mental pun that nobody else would probably get, and if they did, they'd groan. By the time she finished the day, she was cheerful at least, and it wasn't because the coffee place down the street had reopened.

She looked forward to see how the data-gathering effort was going at the library. At least she'd be able to face the work day there with hope. With that in mind, she'd make sure people reported about businesses that they ran across that were still in operation; Labor Market would probably be interested in knowing.

Of course, she would be interested in knowing first. That was how she was, and how she always would be. She knew that about herself. Well, she didn't have to know everything first, but it was a good feeling. Plus, she loved giving information to people.

Walking into the library, she noticed Catherine missing. "Where's Catherine?" she asked Angela.

"She wasn't feeling well, so she went home," Angela said, though she had the look of fear, a look that Marie couldn't really describe but she recognized the expression, as much as Angela tried to hide it. "Not feeling well" probably meant that they were going to lose Catherine soon. And the last thing they needed was to lose Catherine. Heck, they didn't need to lose any of them.

Not when it seemed things were finally getting together into one piece, with the surveys and the togetherness and the everything despite Nezumi who she wasn't going to think about at that moment.

"How are you feeling?" Marie asked, knowing that Angela was sick too. Both of them had stayed even when they should be home, resting and doing little other than to keep alive, and yet they were there. At the library. Working. As if they had to keep working to stay alive.

That illusion had to have been shattered when Catherine got worse. She bet that Catherine wanted to be there, Catherine hadn't wanted to be home, Catherine had found herself with no choice. And it wasn't like Sick Leave mattered at the moment.

Maybe the two librarians had wanted everything to go back to normal as desperately as Marie had. Maybe they wanted it even more than Marie did. Or at least as much as Marie did. Information could be written down, but human beings – and other beings – were unique.

And to a librarian, who preserved information, the loss of so many beings probably seemed catastrophic. That's how she felt, anyway. Her mom probably felt that way too, being into geneology. Lose people, and you lose that thread that links members of the family together. Lose one person, and you might take a very long time to find someone else.

They had lost so much. So many people, so much that could have been documented. Marie mourned the loss of so many people too. She was reminded of that Los Angeles Times blog where the blogger was chronicling the deaths by homicide of everybody she could find. It was a sad story, sometimes the victims' only memorial.

She realized at the moment that Angela hadn't answered, and was briefly alarmed. But a look over at the librarian showed that she hadn't collapsed. "I'll be fine," Angela said, and from the look on her face, knew that Marie knew that she was lying.

The library was going to eventually lose Angela too.

The neighborhood was going to lose Angela and Catherine, within the next month or so, Marie guessed. There were only a handful of original residents left, Marie among them. The rest were going to be immigrants to her world, just like some of her ancestors had migrated to the United States within the last hundred years.

"All right," she said softly, to show Angela that, for the sake of everything, she'd accept her lie. Some lies had to be told for comfort, to keep people from peering at someone's innermost self; to keep people from being scared at what they saw. And they had to be accepted, for much the same reason.

It was funny how lies worked when they were meant for good reason. White lies, in other words.

"You might want to look in the conference room," Angela said. "Some of the others have dropped by and updated the map. We put it up this morning, before you came."

Marie smiled. "Thank you. You didn't have to do that."

"It's our neighborhood too," Angie told her. "We're here to help."

Marie nodded. "Let me take a quick look before I sign in." Which she did. Angela, Catherine, and Naoko, or one of those three, or maybe somebody else completely, had arranged the map on one wall, and there were some notes there - some out River's edge, which sounded like Lucas and Teresa's choice of places, a couple of notes in Mrs. Owens' handwriting on Freeport.

It was a good start. She'd worry about correlating the data later, since she wouldn't have time before her shift. If things were slow enough, Angela would probably let her analyze data; sometimes it got slow in there, and as she said, it was their neighborhood too.

She smiled and let the day go by. Some of the others came back with information, or more information if they'd been there previously. She saw about half of the new residents pay visits to the conference room.

Nezumi, thank goodness, was not among them. Marie figured the less seen of her, the better for Marie's sanity, and the less likely Marie would be disappointed when getting out of there did not happen.

It was a good day, all in all, when she said goodbye to Angela and Naoko, and made Angela promise she'd check in on Catherine. Angela promised she would, had already been asked by other people. They'd all cared for Catherine, from her fellow coworkers to the few library patrons left.

And then she collapsed at home. Not literally, but emotionally. Well, she did collapse, onto the couch, wanting nothing but her favorite stuffed toy and a lot of time alone.

She found it kind of silly that when a member of the community disappeared, her reaction was to isolate and hide herself, as if to protect everybody else from her emotions. Or to prevent herself from hurting people by displaying her emotions.

Or maybe that was all stupid. She wasn't sure why she did it, other than to get away from people so that she could cope. She wasn't sure how she'd react, either, if Angela had the news the next day that Catherine had died.

"What happened?" her mother asked, and she shifted on the couch.

"One of the librarians only made it in for a brief time today. Catherine."

Her mother turned her head. "So, she was sick."

"She's been sick for a while," Marie said. "I think we're going to lose her."

"How is everybody taking it?" her mother asked. "Wait, let me get some tea, first."

Marie didn't argue. Marie never argued when her mother offered tea. Marie never even argued about the strength of the tea.

A few minutes later, her mom was handing her a mug of hot tea, and then picking up her own. Marie sniffed hers, and found that her mother had brewed her some Earl Grey, one of her favorite teas. Marie had just picked some up that was decaf.

"Naoko... it's hard to tell with Naoko," Marie said. "Angela I think is taking it hard, especially since she's sick herself. Others are concerned, but...."

"It's not your fault," her mother said, the simple statement showing that she understood Marie better than Marie did herself sometimes.

Marie nodded. "I don't think so, but...." Everything felt like it was her fault, sometimes. Even things that weren't her fault, like when it rained.

They talked until it was time for bed.

The next day felt like the usual routine. Go to State job, work through day, go to library job, finish day. Except, much to Marie's relief, she got paid for the State job. It was kind of a relief to know that she could pay for the groceries she'd left IOUs for. Maybe her mom would get her retirement check too, and eventually one for her Retired Annuitant service.

She promised herself that she'd go replace those IOUs with money at the two stores she'd visited. That would only be right. It might be Saturday, though, before she could do it. There was a down side to working full-time, or at least working eight hours a day.

And she had the rest of the week to go. At least it passed by fairly fast, one routine after another. Then it was suddenly Saturday, and she hoped her Library work would go by fast so she could go on to doing what she was morally required to do - like replace the IOUs with actual money.

It did go actually fast when she got to work. She was cheered to see, as she had all week, more data points being contributed to the survey. Even others were contributing to her survey, those not in the original meeting, those few natives of her dimension left in her home town, or drifters from coast towns that had been devastated like Blue Bay Harbor had been. And she'd helped a few people with advice on where she knew the hotels to be, for those who had come upon their library via walking or driving down the 5 freeway. Downtown seemed to be more organized that their little section of Sacramento, so most often she and the others sent drifters in that direction.

Her agency was fulfiling its purpose in being a job service agency, the job service portion of its duties relocated partially downtown. Things actually felt like they were getting back together. Maybe things would go back to normal, albeit with a drastically reduced population and a small amount of immigrants from other worlds.

The world would survive this. The internet would become reliable. At least she hoped so. She rather liked having the internet, the internet made the world seem smaller. And smaller in a good way, not smaller as in a few pockets of living beings and a lot of empty space.

It was going to take a long time to recover - she wouldn't see Sacramento being back to normal for a long time, she bet - but it was possible. If people stopped dying.

She mentally stopped herself from doom and glooming again. She was too good at it. The world had to recover. The world would recover. Someday there would plays back in Ashland and the asparagus and pear and everything festivals, cider at Apple Hill again. Assuming there wasn't already cider production still going at Apple Hill, alcoholic and non-alcoholic.

Marie was sure they were better at brewing alcoholic apple cider than she had been in college.

Yes, someday things would be back to normal, life would go back to normal, she'd be able to have her exotic blackcurrant mix tea from Twinings (she bet, due to all the havoc, that it wasn't being imported at the moment) as well as all her other favorite teas.

She just had to hope. And not not-hope. Or get depressed. She definitely had to not get depressed.

The rest of the day at the library passed fairly fast, Angela doing her best to be cheerful and cover for Catherine, who she'd said repeatedly was at home resting. Marie made a mental note to get Catherine's address to check on the other woman herself. She was a very good mother hen with adults, might as well put that to use.

She walked towards her house, with the intention of picking up her ATM card. Hopefully the ATM down a mile from her house would work. She'd take out enough money to pay for the first IOU and maybe some groceries. Sunday she'd do the same for the other store.

"Hey, you!"

Marie turned around at the source of the sound. Nezumi Tanaka, Naoko's sister. She wondered what the other girl wanted. Maybe she had been told to get used to the place and get to know the people.

"Hello," Nezumi said, having caught up with her. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Nezumi Tanaka."

"Hello, Tanaka-san," Marie said politely. "I've heard of you. I'm Marie Brown, I work at the Library."

"Yeah, I know that," Nezumi said. "At least about the library part. I've been waiting for you to leave."

"Leave... the library?" Marie asked, mystified.

"Well, for the day, yes. I had to wait until you were away from my big sister. She tends to be a little... weird about things."

Oh. Nezumi wanted to talk to her away from Naoko. That wasn't surprising, and not really good, either. The last thing Marie needed to be doing was talking to Nezumi. And yet, she felt obliged to listen. Obligated, even.

"Well, I'm listening. I want to tell you, though, that I'm not exactly wanting to step in between you and your sister. I mean, I'm the oldest of my sisters, but I don't have any experience with sister-sister fights, and I don't like getting in the way of fights, and... well, I'm not the best person to be going to on anything having to do with your sister because I'm not used to dealing with that sort of thing. Sorry." Why did she have to babble instead of saying something coherent? Well, maybe it might scare Nezumi off.

"You remind me of the man who taught me English. His name was Hashi-san. He taught Naoko English too." Nezumi was grinning at the whole thing, her whole babble. That was scary. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

Okay, she hadn't been put off by Marie's babbling. Marie had to admit she didn't deal with strangers very well. She was either rather shy or she babbled. More shy than babbling. Apparently that day was babbling day.

She could have very well done without it being babbling day.

"Oh?" Marie asked.

"I didn't mean to sound like we should discontinue all survival efforts," Nezumi said as they walked down the street. "It's just... you shouldn't be planning long-term. We at home have had some success in entering other dimensions. You can bet that my family - mine and Naoko's family - will be tracing what they can and finding a way to open the portal to this place. And then, when they do, I'm sure they'll take us all in. I mean, there's no reason to live here when you can live in a place where you'll be sure everything's going to still be around in a few months."

"Your people have portal technology?" Marie asked. "Your world sounds either very full of magic or much more advanced than mine."

"Well, I do come from sixty years in your future. Naoko does, too." It sounded like a simple statement of fact. "Portal technology is fairly new, but we've had experience with them for a long time. Hashi-chan fell out of a portal, that's what got us interested in them. And they'll be looking for us, especially big sister."

"Naoko?" Marie asked, noting mentally that she had to stay out of their disagreements, but if she could understand their disagreements, that would be really good.

"They're more likely looking for her than me. I'm sure that they're looking for me, too, but their first priority? Naoko."

"Naoko?" Marie asked again. "You know, I said I'd like to...."

"Stay out of our family disputes," Nezumi finished. "I'm telling you why we're going to be saved, not involve you in Naoko's problems."

"Okay," Marie said dubiously. "So, what does Naoko have to do with all this?"

"Naoko... my big sister is the one Dad's always loved more than any of us. And it's because of her attitude. Or maybe despite it." Nezumi grinned. "That's why I'm not too worried. We'll be rescued. How would you like to move to Japan?"

"Erm." Marie didn't know what to make of the subject change. Or maybe it really wasn't a subject change. "I actually applied to be in the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, but I wasn't accepted. And I can see why. I forgot a transcript, which is one of the things they're real strict about, and I can figure that... well, I didn't get in."

She was sure that the statement from her therapist that she could function in spite of her anxiety disorder didn't help. Or maybe because of the statement. The program was obviously worried about suicides, and she did have a problem with depression. She had gotten to suicidal ideation in her life more than once.

"Oh, good, you know more about Japan than a lot of Americans do, then." Nezumi grinned more at her words. "You'll love it there, once the portal opens. Dad can work on getting you residence if you want, or you can move to America, but I think you'll like Japan. You obviously do."

"Maybe I wanted it for the salary?" Actually, Marie had wanted it to get away from the call center, but it had sounded like it was just a stressful when it wasn't boring as hell. Her Japanese definitely would have improved, though.

When she'd pitched it to her bosses, it had been to get experience working with foreign cultures, something useful for her career with the State. They'd been agreeable, surprisingly, since she'd been pretty much been asking them to allow her to go back to State service after a year in Japan.

"You? From what I hear, you wouldn't be in it for the salary." Nezumi laughed. "You don't seem the type to just be in it for the money, you wanted to be in Japan. And I don't blame you."

"I can't even pass 4-kyuu on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test," Marie protested. "Or at least I haven't yet." The kanji had been easy; the vocabulary and grammar had sunk her. Well, she hadn't been that great at the readings, either. She could read a lot of 3-kyuu kanji meanings, too, but readings escaped her. A lot. And of course, she had never learned it formally.

"Well, when you move to Japan, I'm sure somebody will help you with your yon-kyuu, and your san-kyuu." Nezumi seemed so certain that not only would she get to go home, but that Marie would go with her. And stay in Japan.

"And I'm sure I'll be able to sankyuu for that," Marie said, mentally groaning at her own pun. "Sankyuu" was, of course, the Japanese mangling of "Thank You", and she wondered if Nezumi would get that.

Nezumi laughed again. "You have a great sense of humor, too." Yeah, she'd apparently gotten the pun, or at least Marie hoped so. "You'd love it at home. The weather is colder than it is here, but you can get used to it."

"You want me to come with you?" Marie asked.

"Of course I want you to come with me," Nezumi said. "What can this world offer you that mine can't? I mean, other than it's not home."

Marie looked at the homes, at the street, thought about her elementary school and her middle school and her high school, all only a few miles away from where she was. Walking distance, all of them. Places where she'd grown up. College was hundreds of miles away, but her primary and secondary school years? Only a few miles away. If she counted preschool, that wasn't that far either. It had been at the church down on Freeport. Or was it Fruitridge? Freeport, she thought, not that far off from where the Owens family was taking inventory.

"Just think about it," Nezumi said. "You'd be great there." Abruptly, she kissed Marie full on the lips. Marie had, admittedly, never been kissed before, not by anybody. Well, not on the lips. They were soft and wet and she so didn't want to go there. Especially when it was so unexpected and she really didn't like this surprise, though at least that solved her never being kissed before problem. "Think about it."

"Oookay," Marie said once the kiss was finished, hoping that her mother had not looked out the window right that moment. Not that Nezumi was unattractive or anything, and not that she was completely opposed to a same-sex relationship, but Nezumi kissing her had just won a place on her "strangest things to ever happen to me" list. "Uh, you realize in America that it's not nice to kiss a person that you just met. Some people might take offense."

Nezumi grinned once more, and Marie stared at her as she left. "I think I need to go do something normal. Or something like that." Maybe sit in her room and figure out a way to explain to her mother that she'd discovered girls at age twenty three, she'd just never had the courage to date or tell her mom that while she mostly liked guys, she did like the occasional girl as well.

Marie decided after a minute or so of soul searching that even if her mother had seen it... well, she'd deal with it later. Hopefully much later. Of course, her mother probably knew that the neighbors the next street over who had left were lesbians, and they'd gone to her church, so her mom was probably open-minded. Heaven help her if she'd come out during the time her grandfather was alive; she didn't know how he'd have taken it. Ditto for one of her previous church ministers; he wasn't exactly pro-homosexuality.

Maybe it was a good thing she'd stopped going to church. Even in her church, where they didn't try to take the bible literally (in fact, they'd had a good series about how some of the apparent 'miracles' came about that she'd really liked once), but she was still wary of organized religion having problems with her right to control her own reproduction and her own sexuality.

Religion had never really interested her except as a study topic and as history. Maybe it was because she was a preacher's grandkid, and perhaps because her entire family had been scholarly. Well, on her mom's side, anyway. Her aunt had been a lawyer briefly, her grandfather a minister, her mother had gotten not only a bachelor's but a master's (in something really strange, but that was her mother – she liked reading). Marie had always been expected to read, to study, to go to college. It was a given, just like it was so likely that she'd end up in State service like her mom.

Yeah, definitely needed to bring it up at some point in the future. The far future. The way far future. Like on her mom's deathbed, which hopefully would be some thirty years in the future.

Now was the time to pay off IOUs and that sort of thing. The responsible stuff she was expected to do. In an odd way, it was like paying for groceries on a buy-now-pay-later plan, except the grocer hadn't authorized it because they weren't (as far as Marie could tell) there to authorize it.

She just hoped they'd come back and accept that for a short while, she'd had an IOU. Or maybe they'd come back and they'd accept an after the fact IOU, just this once. Just as long as they didn't have her arrested for breaking and entering, since she had promised to pay for her stuff.

Maybe she'd get lucky and they would never know. She felt guilty enough as it was to leave an IOU instead of paying. But then again, she'd always honored her promises to pay. The people running her office's unofficial snacks for sale loved her because she paid ASAP. Unless it was credit card debt, she hated accruing it, and she'd begun to pay even that down.

Okay, she hated accruing Credit Card debt too, but she was a bit slower at paying it off. That was better.

In any case, concentrating on paying off the IOUs was nice and relatively simple. Hopefully the ATM would work, though. She had a feeling the street, a main thoroughfare, would be as empty as it had been the first time she'd gone down it. It was an eerie feeling, given how major the street was. A street that had cars going down it all the time, and now she was unafraid of crossing the intersection with another major street catticorner. She stopped at the ATM, and amazingly, it still worked. Must have been enough ATM maintenance people still around, ditto for the computer network. Taking the money out, she headed the one and a half miles to the store, crossed the street catticorner to the strip mall, and got inside.

There were signs that others had been there, and those people not the owners. She had to wonder if they were paying for their food, too.

Putting cash into an envelope and taking her IOU out of its hiding place, she then went shopping with the rest of the money. She made sure she kept a total of everything she was buying so that she could pay the rest into the same envelope. It was a little tough, but she managed.

At least someone had tossed a lot of the fruits and salads. That was good. They were starting to get a little... gross. "A little" being the understatement, so Marie was glad they were gone. It looked like the meat had gone the same way. Good too. Some of the frozen foods were going bad but others weren't, and the dry food was still good, including the cat food. Somebody had also clearly been opening the ant baits; there were some cleared Terros with no ant activity.

She made a note to herself to ask both Disa and Keegan and the Owens family. With that in mind, she headed back. She made another note to herself to check on the other strip mall a mile or two down the crosstreet.

While she was at it, a few miles down there was another library; she should check to see what they knew. This had been her favorite place to go after school, when she'd had to kill time before Mathletes because that was after 8th period and she had had zero period. She still wasn't sure why she was in Mathletes, but that's what one did when in her program in high school, one did Mathletes. Or at least tried out for Mathletes. She'd done it one year, she'd been on Team B, but she'd done it.

Maybe it had been after seventh period and that was the year she ran out of things to take, so she'd had to kill an hour? Maybe that was it. In any case, she'd loved that library.

Definitely shouldn't have forgotten it, and definitely also had to check it out. Someday. When she wasn't hauling groceries. She'd walked this round because she'd been so preoccupied with her encounter with Nezumi, instead of taking her bicycle to the store. Good thing she was in fairly good shape and was used to walking that far. It was only some 3.2 miles each way. She might have stopped a few times, but she eventually got home with the grocieries.

Her mom ended putting them away as she rested her arms, legs, and rest of her body. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. She'd remember to take the bike next time, honest, she just hadn't been expecting to be kissed by another girl. That was the kind of thing that one did not expect.

 

"Mental note," she said softly. "Learn not to be distracted by Naoko's little sister that easily."

"Naoko's little sister?" her mom asked, coming back in after putting the groceries away. "Nezumi, right?"

"Yeah. She's... interesting." Very interesting, definitely. At least her mother wasn't asking about why Naoko's little sister was kissing Marie. Maybe she hadn't seen it. If Marie was lucky. Marie might actually be that lucky.

Marie was hoping she'd be that lucky. She had a feeling that she wasn't, though, not with Nezumi being that... affectionate. She wondered what in the world was going on with the younger asian girl, and resolved to ask Naoko. Naoko would probably know, or might know. On the other hand, she might be as mystified as Marie was.

Again, something to deal with later. Way later. Okay, maybe next week later. Before or after work. Something like that.

She needed a walk. Yeah, even after walking as far as she did, she needed a walk. But not a long one. Just up the street to the park by the firehouse. If she took a towel or something like that, she could lay down in the sun, read or contemplate things. Things being Nezumi. A lot of Nezumi. She supposed she could also try for the private community area, but... wait. The neighbors had left her mom a key to that, she could borrow it and go there and rest without having to worry about Nezumi encountering her there.

Marie borrowed the key and headed up the street, crossing it and going up another to the private community area. She passed by the street where the Owens family lived, and saw Det. She waved to him, and he quickened his pace towards her. "Hey," she said by way of greeting. "Where you headed to?"

Det shrugged. "Anywhere where I can just go and think. You?"

"Ditto. I had something happen that I need to think about, pretty much away from home."

"Hey, there's a private community area down the street, want to go?" Det asked. "I have the key."

Marie laughed. "What a coincidence. So do I!"

Det laughed in turn. "I guess we had the same idea at the same time."

"List telepathy," Marie said, knowing the term would mean absolutely nothing to Det, but it did to her.

"I've never heard of List Telepathy," Det said, sobering up a little. "Is that a telepathic technique?"

"Nah," Marie said. "It was a term the people on an email list I used to be on used when two people would make the same suggestion within minutes of each other, without the benefit of either knowing about the other's post." She realized that didn't clarify much, especially since telepathy seemed to be real to him. "Up until the Event, there were no known telepaths on my world. Though the list was for a show with telepaths in it."

"Oh," Det said. "That makes sense. Telepaths are real in our world, though." He seemed about to say more, but didn't, and Marie wasn't sure if she should press. Maybe Telepaths were accepted, or maybe they weren't.

"Do you know any?" Marie asked curiously. That should be a safe question. And her curiosity was getting the better of her anyway, so she had to ask.

"Me, mom, and Dad," Det answered. He didn't sound sure that he wanted to tell her that - his voice was hesitant and unsure - but he had. "My Dad because all his people are telepathic, my mom because she's partly like my Dad, and me, because I'm special."

His voice, still unsure, belied the last statement. "Your parents love you," Marie said gently. "And I won't tell if you don't want me to."

"Of course they love me," Det said, as if the fact was obvious. "And Dad doesn't lie. He skirts the truth sometimes, but he doesn't lie. And I learned not to lie too, at least not to them. I can't lie to them. They're telepaths."

"Um." Marie considered that. Some science fiction stories she'd read postulated that a lot of telepaths would be networked in some kind of net, were secrets were impossible. Where was the last time she'd seen that idea, in that old Doctor Who original novel? Probably not, though she was sure she'd seen it there. "That makes sense."

"Yeah, it does." Det was moving forward again, heading towards the private community center. "Actually, that's why I have to get away from them to think."

"Oh." That made sense too. Maybe one could get away from the network or detach themselves, at least if there weren't enough telepaths to cause the whole net to form.

"I take it you need to think too?" he asked as he reached the fence and then the gate.

"I had a very... interesting... encounter with Nezumi Tanaka," she said. She was sure she was blushing; she wasn't able to really look, but she felt like it.

"Oh," he said. "Er. Yeah."

Poor Det looked like he'd just seen something particularly more than he really wanted to see. "Am I projecting?" she asked. "I didn't mean to."

"Yeah, but I don't think you meant to," Det said. "You might not be telepathic yourself, but you sometimes think louder than most people. Humans, I mean. Dad might be able to help you with that."

"Cool. I would prefer not to be rude." Especially when she didn't even know she was being rude.

"I have different problems than you do," Det said. "And it's not really because of her. It's because of something she said." He unlocked the gate, letting her in and following himself.

"Tell me, they're probably easier to deal with than mine," Marie said. Oh boy, they had to be easier than hers, in a lot of ways. There was no way that his could be as complicated as hers.

Closing the gate, he nodded. He didn't say anything, however, until they were away from the gate. She had to wonder why, because if his parents were telepaths (and how much of what she'd been thinking they'd heard?), it really didn't matter whether they stepped away from the gate, discussed it while swimming in the pool, or whatever. They'd still know.

Somehow, she'd never thought that she'd be dealing with telepaths. And at the moment, it was still something abstract to her. She was sure that the paranoid, panicing, anxiety-ridden part of her brain would kick in sooner or later; for now, she was happy to deal normally.

It would be so good to not freak out about things she couldn't do much about. She was way too good at freaking out about things beyond her control, despite many lessons to the contrary. Anxiety disorder was hell, and she'd sometimes been amazed at people parading the fact they had it around as if it was something fashionable. She hated that it gave her potential stomach problems from the chemical reactions caused by anxiety; it not only didn't feel too good, but she could be having stomach problems in a few years.

Turning her mind back to Det's problems, for she was always better when the problem wasn't her own, she let Det sit down on the grass, out of sight of the fence and the road. She sat down too, feeling strangely at ease there, despite the small, constant worry that someone was going to come and chase them out. Not likely, she told herself and her stomach. Not when there weren't enough people, not now.

"So, what's up?" Marie asked.

"Mom and Dad want to settle here," Det said. "They like it here." He looked at the swimming pool unseeingly. "They see it as a second chance, a way to get away from familial obligations and everything else, start new here. The fact your technology's way behind ours doesn't really matter to them."

"I'm surprised then," Marie said, thinking of the PBS series "The 1900s House" and its American sequel. What was it called? Frontier House? She'd never really seen it. Which was surprising, since she'd loved the original British version. Oh, they'd had to make the 1900s house up to the 21st (or was it 20th?) century fire code, but otherwise it had been faithful to the standard house of that era. No commercial shampoos, no television, no Internet, no washing machines. She remembered an episode where the two women – the mother and daughter – had cheated and bought commercial shampoo after having to deal with the home-made shampoo they'd had to deal with.

There would be no place to get futuristic shampoo here, no computer networks more advanced than the Internet, probably little they were used to. But they wanted to make a home on this world anyway. She suddenly understood why Nezumi wanted to go home, too. Though, interestingly enough, Naoko showed no interest in going home as far as she could tell, at least from Nezumi's remarks.

Several of the families and others who had settled in the neighborhood were from the future, and yet none of them had said anything about wanting to go home. But did they really go home?

"And do you want to go home?" Marie asked. It made sense that Det, probably used to his creature comforts, wanted to go back to his own time.

"I have to," Det said. "My future's there."

It was said with a calm certainty that Marie hadn't expected out of a twelve year old. As if he knew what was going to happen, and that was it.

"That's unusual," she said finally. "To have someone your age so sure as to your future."

Det shrugged. "I knew since I got here that we were going to have to go back, but I guess Nezumi feeling that way kind of made me face things."

"Yeah, Nezumi's words are affecting me, too," Marie acknowledged. "This is my home, but if it can't recover, I want to go to a world where there's people. Lots of people." There, she'd out and said it. "What's your world like, that your parents are so happy to get away from it?"

Okay, could have used a little more tact there, but at least she'd asked. Besides, it was somebody's future, she wanted to know more about the future. Well, kind of the future. Not her future, but still cool.

"It's less the world than part of the family," Det said thoughtfully. "It isn't horrible. The atmosphere's being cleaned up, there are no major wards going on, there's space travel...."

"Obviously," Marie noted with a grin.

"There have been aliens on Earth for thousands of years. We just started knowing about them in the last decade of the twentieth century," he said, as if she'd never opened her mouth. "Dad's species was one of those out there, so we got to find out about them the same time we found out about the rest of the universe. By the time my great-grandmother was growing up, the average person did know what Dad's kind looked like."

"Oh, good?" Marie asked.

"Dad's culture's pretty hide-bound. Mom says because they're telepaths, they're hide-bound as anything. Women stay home, men do the work unless you're at a farm or otherwise the woman's needed. Parents arrange their kids' marriages. And Dad's kind thinks they're superior. But on the other hand, they can be really close to each other."

"Sounds nice. Well, not nice, but...."

"Yeah. Dad grew up in that culture, but he left it as soon as he could. Mom never grew up with it and couldn't stand it."

"So they adopted you and stayed on Earth?" Marie asked.

Det nodded. "From what they tell me, they didn't want their kid stuck in the world they'd come from, so they adopted me, figuring I'd be safe."

"Sort of like the Japanese," Marie said. "From what I hear, they're pretty 'We're superior, we're homogeneous, we like it that way' sort of attitude. But no arranged marriages. At least mostly."

"Dad says they're a lot more open nowadays, now sometimes Dad and Mom have to fight to keep from being swallowed up again. That's why Mom and Dad don't want to go home; because they don't want the culture to swallow me up, too."

Marie remembered something the boy had said. "Does this have something to do with you being named to insult someone?"

Nodding, Det looked at the far fence. "In Dad's culture, you don't name a child after somebody if that child isn't from their species, unless you mean to insult them."

"The linguistic equivalent of a middle finger," Marie said, returning Det's nod, or perhaps just feeling like nodding herself. "Except you were accepted."

"Mom and Dad named me after Dad's Grandfather," Det said. "He decided I made a better member of their culture than my parents did, so he was proud I was named after him."

"And he mixed you up in his society?" Marie asked. It made logical sense from what he'd been telling her.

"Mom and Dad think so," Det said. "I'm not supposed to know this... but he was pressuring my Dad to arrange a marriage for me."

"Arrange a marriage... oh, my...." Det was only twelve. Twelve years old. And his father's grandfather wanted a marriage arranged for him. "And your parents said no."

"My parents said no," Det told her. "Actually, father said that there was no way he was going to marry me off to one of his own kind, and his grandfather said there was no way I was going to be married off to a mere human."

Marie chuckled at that last. "Thinks of you as his kind, does he?"

"He does," Det said. "He thinks I was born that way and mom and dad found me. That was the only good thing that he says they did ever since they got married. He arranged their marriage, by the way."

"But he's not arranging yours?" Marie asked.

Det shrugged. "He's threatened to, but Dad apparently told him he wouldn't recognize the marriage promise and there was no way in hell I was going there to get married. Especially since Grandfather - great-grandfather - wanted me to get married young."

"And you want to go home?" Marie asked, trying to understand why this teenager, who seemed to be so normal and so average - at least until she discovered he was a telepath - would want to go some place where he was likely to end up married off to an alien girl from a very traditional culture.

"Not really," Det said. "I like it here too. It's a nice place. But... I've seen the future. And I get married to this girl when we're both fourteen."

Marie started to say something, but closed her mouth before she could say anything really stupid but well-meaning. He'd seen the future somehow. He was telepathic. He was well-behaved.

And he was apparently supposed to marry this alien girl that he'd be engaged to if his great-grandfather hadn't done so already. He was twelve. He was accepting it so quietly and so well. Or he seemed to be.

"I couldn't accept something like that, I know," she said finally. "Could you?"

"I have to," Det said. "It's my future. I don't know her name yet, or where she's from, but I've seen her. I know I'm gonna marry her, with or without my parents' consent."

And he didn't need it, Marie realized, because his great-grandfather would happily arrange everything for him. He would consent for the family, and Det, who shouldn't even be mixed up in these kinds of things, would pay the price.

Of course, maybe it wasn't such a big price to him, which was possible. He wasn't freaking out, after all.

"That is so amazing," she said finally. "Not something I would have gone for myself, mind you, but amazing."

Det shrugged. "It's what I'm destined to do. Nothing can change it, though Mom and Dad can try."

"So, did you tell your mom and dad, and did they argue with you about it?" Marie asked, curious.

"I wanted to think about it first," Det said, shifting his position. "Mom might have guessed anyway, but I wanted to think about it before I talked about it."

"Always a wise idea," Marie said. "It always helps to put together a good position. You never know when you might need to defend it... no matter how bizarre it may seem." And Det's was damn bizarre. He really didn't want to go home to a marriage arrangement that may or may not have happened yet, but he felt obliged because it was something he'd forseen.

Marie was glad for the reminder that no matter how bizarre her day had become, at least there was somebody in the neighborhood with more bizarre problems.

Det nodded. "Right. Thanks."

"No problem," Marie said. "I wish I could figure out my own that easily."

"I think," Det said quietly, "That you might find the resolution easier than you think."

Marie gave him a wan smile. "Thank you."

Det got up. "I think I'm going to figure this out for a little while."

"Good idea," Marie said. "I'm going to sit here, pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, and figure out my own problem."

She needed the refuge. She needed the peace. Heck, she needed to be away from people, even Det, to recharge and to think clearly. Not that she'd been beyond feeling anxious and desperate when alone, but she also could put facts together better when she wasn't feeling pressured. She imagined most people were that way, but sometimes it was easier to kick oneself in the butt when one was not afraid to look foolish.

Watching Det leave, she moved over to a deck chair, dusting it off and adjusting it so she was leaning back. The day was lovely, the clouds pleasant, and she wished that she was there legitimately. She mentally kicked herself for being nervous; she had a key, and on the off chance somebody did come in, what were the chances that they'd recognize that she didn't live in their HOA, much less yell at her or call the police.

Not worrying was a good thing. At least not over the likelyhood of being kicked out of where she was at the moment.

Nezumi was a better target to worry about. And part of that was her proposal, but the other part was the kiss.

Normally, she'd ask her mom for relationship advice, on how to do x when someone does y. But even though her mom was pretty welcoming – at least she thought so – of homosexuality, she still was afraid to ask he advice on the matter. Nezumi's action had be more than a kiss on the cheek, she had to mean something.

Or maybe it meant nothing at all. Maybe that was how she kissed everybody, and didn't realize it wasn't done on Marie's world. Her action wasn't typical Japanese, but the culture might have changed a few decades down the line. Nothing to worry about, then. Nezumi was just flamboyant, that was all. The fact that Naoko didn't indicated that it was maybe something popular at Nezumi's age range and not Naoko's.

Marie could live with that. She got up out of the chair and headed out, intending to do what she'd gone to do, and then realized she'd forgotten what that was. Oh, yeah. Coming to the clubhouse. To figure Nezumi out. That was done, cross out another thing to do on her list.

She decided to head home, help her mom out with anything needed. Her mom had talked about getting a bicycle for commuting to work and church, especially church. With gas in short supply for the moment, bicycling and other non-gassy things were on the agenda.

After all, her mom at least intended on going to church for quite a while. And the main bus that ran by her place didn't run on Sundays. Her mother was talking about seeing the state of the Choir; there might be one or two members left.

Marie just hoped there was enough of the congregation left; the average congregation age was getting up there. She'd grown up in that church and would be sad to see it die, even if she wasn't particularly feeling religious a lot of the time. She didn't know if that was because she was a preacher's grandkid, because she'd never really connected, or because of her depression that had been diagnosed for a good portion of her life.

She was hoping it was the depression or the shyness. She figured her now-dead grandfather would be horrified if he knew that his granddaughter – well, the granddaughter that was more studious and intellectual – didn't share his interest in church. "Sorry, grandfather," she whispered, as if he was nearby. For all she knew, she was wrong, Very wrong.

And if she was very wrong, she might not even see him, but she would see an afterlife. It was funny. She had had a talk with her grandmother one time, long ago, when her grandmother had the little pale yellow station wagon. They'd talked about the reality of the existance of the Devil, and Marie had come to the conclusion that he didn't exist.

Marie had thought about the Bible a lot, and decided that it was a great amount of stories on how to worship God, but that she had to find God on her own, with maybe a little help from the church.

Yeah, her grandfather would probably be very disappointed in her. He'd have probably been spinning in his grave. But he'd taught her to think, taught her a lot. So hopefully he wasn't spinning too fast.

Well, at least not over the whole belief thing. She still was glad that he hadn't been alive when she figured out she wasn't entirely straight.

It was funny to think that she'd survived the end of the world, pretty much. Of course, if one held with the rapture theory, the people who had disappeared were the saved ones. Then again, she doubted that those believing in the Rapture would be too pleased to know that a devout muslim couple had been "raptured" while riding her bus that day, if that's what had happened when everybody disappeared. Either God had a great big sense of humor, was more tolerant that some of his followers expected, or it hadn't been God's work.

She preferred to think that if there was an afterlife, it didn't matter what age or sex you were, what sexual orientation, what religion. It didn't matter who you were in love with, what sex they were, and how one handled the relationship as long as the partners cared for one another.

Of course, given that she hadn't had any evidence of the afterlife (though she was pretty sure ghosts existed), she couldn't really judge anything.

She returned home, meeting her mother at the door. Her mother had a broom in hand, and was trying to get the spider webs out of the corner just inside the door. "Any luck?" Marie asked.

"Next time you go to the store, look for an extending brush," her mother said. Marie couldn't blame her; some of their spider webs were quite difficult to reach and also quite obvious.

"Will do," she said. "I paid off the first store, I wish I'd known about it when I was out there." The second store, just around the corner from their place, was the other one they owed. Marie would have to go back to the ATM, take out the money, hike back, break in, leave money, and buy groceries. In more or less that order.

"It's not urgent," her mother said. "Next time is fine."

Marie nodded. "Maybe I'll go tomorrow, if we have some money to leave at the drug store. They're more likely to have one anyway." She knew for sure neither of the grocery stores would. Meds, office/school supplies, and some minor drug store like stuff, yes. The extending spider web removers would come from a real drug store.

Letting her mom try to tackle the spider webs, she went upstairs to relax with a book. Relaxing with a book was good. Relaxing with a book would give her a chance to think about things in a new way.

Like the possibility that maybe she was lucky, and the evangelicals that would love the chance to reform the U.S. into a Christian nation had all been "Raptured" off to someplace... less than pleasant. She couldn't say she wasn't full of sin - wishing that the evangelicals would get a taste of their own hell for their intolerance was certainly Not Nice - but she was respectable by her own moral standards.

Not Nice. She was beginning to talk like the cleric Piffany in the Nodwick series. She smiled and shook her head at that.

Whatever her differences with her family on religion, she was glad that she did have the chance to be educated, and to at least attempt to think critically of things. Her grandfather had left books on religion and religious history, had gotten her interested in Martin Luther, had introduced her to Georg Spalatin, librarian and close friend to Martin Luther.

She thought it was sad that the librarian who had vouched for Luther so many times was virtually unknown outside of people who had studied Martin Luther. At best, Spalatin was a footnote. And yet Luther would have not succeeded if not for him.

Marie smiled wanly. Maybe being a footnote wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe she, too, would be a footnote when the world got back to normal. Nowadays, that wasn't such a bad thing. "The founder of Greenhaven Town," she mused with a wider grin. Never mind that she didn't technically live in the Greenhaven area at the moment. She'd lived in the area enough for it to count.

And maybe Sacramento would come together too, albeit as a smaller city. A tenth, a twentieth of what it had been would still be not badly sized.

Assuming she stayed there if Nezumi's people managed to open a portal home. A new world might not be so bad.

She resolved to talk about it on Monday with Naoko, if she didn't encounter the other librarian before then.

Sunday passed quietly. The groceries were paid for and gotten, though despite her best tries, Marie didn't quite find what her mom was looking for at the drug store. She had more luck after breaking in to the local hardware store, bringing her mom home what her mom had needed (and leaving money at the hardware store as well).

Monday, she went to her first work place, processed forms, and went onto her second job at the library. "Naoko," she said, catching the librarian at one of the slower moments, "Your sister has told me some things that were rather... well, I wanted to talk to you about them."

Naoko gave the impression of rolling her eyes. "Nezumi is Nezumi. But yes, when we have time, I'll try to make sense out of my younger sister."

"Thank you," Marie said politely. She left Naoko alone for the rest of the time, and was surprised to see Naoko preparing to leave at the same time she did.

"I thought we might speak in the park," Naoko said. "I want to hear what my little sister said to you."

"That your people have a way to make some kind of portal, that they're probably primarily looking for you, and that... well, I think she likes me? She kissed me, anyway. Oh, and I also remind her of somebody she knows."

Naoko said something particularly growly in the language that Marie had never heard before the sisters came there, and grabbed Marie by the shirt and vest. "You... are going to have to start learning that language I promised I'd teach you."

That was not the reaction that Marie had expected. "Why?"

Shaking her head in apparent anger, Naoko said, "Because she's made you her latest toy... you might need to know the language just to survive."

"Eh?" Marie asked, not sure she'd heard Naoko correctly. "Toy?" She wasn't sure if she'd heard Naoko correctly. Maybe Naoko had used the incorrect English word.

"First lesson," Naoko said. "Toy." She growed out a word, sounding like she was about to start a fight with it. "Repeat."

Marie tried, but her throat wasn't quite up to making those kinds of sounds without practice. She figured Naoko probably had used it a lot, and hoped her first try didn't sound too bad for an absolute beginner.

"Try again," the librarian said, voicing the word again. "You need to use your voice more."

Marie tried again, coming a bit closer this time. "This sounds like you're about to start a fight," she said.

"It started out as a battle language," Naoko told her. "It's expanded a lot, but it started out as a battle language, and yes, it does sound like it. The beings that use this language were created to fight. The social niceties are brought in from Japanese and reformed to make them fit in. Otherwise, yes, beings were fighting with it and that's what it's good for."

"Like... er, toys?" She wasn't sure if she wanted to know what Nezumi meant. She had a sneaking suspicion that she did know, but she wasn't sure that she wanted to have it confirmed.

"My father is not human," Naoko said matter-of-factly, as if non-human fathers were nothing special and not noteworthy. "But his kind – the human-appearing ones, anyway – are very popular with humans, and they are, to a very limited extent, fertile with humans. We who are crossbreeds are very rare, if not extremely rare.

"There is no lack of humans who are caught up in their mystique and would give anything to bed beings like my father. I am the result of such a union. My father, and indeed to some extent us crossbreeds, do not lack in sex partners. In fact, for me, it is a matter of fending off potential partners.

"My father, like most of his kind, call such people toys. Sometimes father goes and hunts people down to be toys that never even thought about the possibility as well. It's a bad habit of his – after all, he has so many that want to be his lover. But he likes variety.

"And so does Nezumi. And neither of them have problems having lovers who were, originally, not interested in them. Sex toys. They don't care. The good news is that Nezumi will lose interest in you and move on. Hopefully sooner rather than later."

"Oh boy," Marie said. "So, do I just have to turn her down?" She tried to imagine turning the younger woman down, and realized that even if she was not interested in a relationship – and being celibate, she wasn't interested in a sexual one – it would be painful.

"Sometimes that works," Naoko said. "Sometimes it gets her interested more. I don't know how she'll react. But she's not who I'm worried about."

"Who are you worried about?" Marie asked.

"My father, and his lover," Naoko said. "Another one of his kind, one named Cap. If my sister is interested, they will too. You might need to get away from here, run, if they open the portal, because you might find yourself there, willing or not."

 

"Oh, dear," was the only thing Marie could find that didn't sound stupid or two gawpy.

"Or my father and the rest of his kind could decide to invade this world," Naoko said after a few moments of consideration. "I'm sure they'd consider it fun. My father would, anyway." Her face wrinkled in disgust. "You don't want to meet my father."

"So how do I stop people with portal technology from creating a portal into my world and... er... forcefully adopting it?"

"You don't," Naoko said. "You just hope that your plague makes everybody pause before trying to invade here."

"Gee, thank goodness for the plague." How had War of the Worlds ended? Some bacteria the alien invaders couldn't stand? Of course, the plague was killing off her people right and left too.

Naoko gave a brief nod. "It won't stop my father and his kind, they're probably immune, but it'll stop his followers." She looked at the vacant street. "If they can come, they will come. And we - you - need to be prepared."

Marie nodded back. "If you'll help me, I'll do my best to keep away from your family."

"It isn't just that," Naoko said. "Things need to be coordinated. You are the best choice to coordinate things. Therefore, you will be responsible for coordinating our preparation for invasion."

"Great." Marie could think of a lot of things she didn't mind coordinating. Directing people? Okay. Helping people not duplicate effort? Okay. Helping coordinate whatever to prevent an invasion for another dimension? Not so much.

Marie wondered if surviving the plague was such a lucky thing, whether she should have stayed in Blue Bay Harbor, and what in the hell she could do against an invasion.

It seemed like a cruel twist of fate to have someone with so many anxiety problems be responsible for the defense of an entire city, when that someone worried at night if she'd said the wrong thing and made somebody mad or hurt them. She'd no doubt have stomach ulcers and other unpleasant health effects by the time she turned thirty six.

She was so not cut out to be a leader. But she took a deep breath, and with Naoko looking at her, decided not to bring that up at the moment. She could handle things until somebody competent could be found. She'd survive this, everybody would survive this, she'd just have to pretend that this whole coordinating thing was something given to her from above instead of one of her coworkers' statements.

One picked up a lot of tricks for surviving things when one was anxiety disordered.

"Okay. We'll need to know more about portals, about how likely they'd be able to find you and Nezumi - especially you - what steps they could take to eradicate the plague, the personalities of the players involved, and also, we need to get the neighborhood together on this."

Who said she couldn't come up with ideas when she was in not-so-imminent danger of Nezumi introducing her to her and Naoko's father? Dumb, she wasn't. She felt like it sometimes - well, a lot - but she wasn't. And it was time to put that brain of hers to use.

"I don't know if we want to notify the police yet, or when we've better surveyed the area," Marie added. "Erm. Is your father likely to find the police officers attractive?"

"My father finds most humans attractive," Naoko said grimly. "He'll bed anybody as long as they're above age of consent."

"Most definitely above the age of consent here," Marie said. "I think everybody in our neighborhood with the exception of Det is." She tried to imagine a faceless male sleeping his way through her neighborhood, and shuddered.

When had it become her neighborhood? She hadn't lived there for two years, since she'd moved to live in Blue Bay Harbor. And it wasn't really her city, either, except that she'd grown up there.

But they were hers, and she felt responsible for them in a way that had never occurred to her before.

"I'll try to answer some of your questions as we go along," Naoko told her. "But you should still learn the language. Someone should, just in case the worst happens."

Marie nodded. "I'm afraid I'm too good at imagining worst-case scenarios." That's what people with anxiety disorder did; if anything could go wrong, they'd be able to imagine how it would go wrong. Not that everybody with anxiety disorder would say the glass was half-empty, but they could tell you in great detail on all the ways the glass could be shattered.

"You'll need your imagination on that," Naoko said. "In the meantime, I should go back to my duties. You have a lot to plan for."

That had to be the understatement of the year. But she let Naoko go, heading off herself to go home. As she crossed the street, she saw Greer Lewis heading in her direction, and grinned. Put on a happy face. Best not to let people panic until she got at least some preliminary facts.

"Hey, Greer, how are things going?" She'd taken a liking to Greer Lewis; the consultant had about as much formal library training as she did - in fact, less - but she'd helped organize the sheets. She'd told Marie that it was what she was used to doing anyway, and so she'd made improvements in Marie's system.

She knew that Greer had gone downtown that morning to see what historical data she could find. Marie had to wonder if she'd visited the central library, if it was still open; she herself had, shamefully, never checked. After all, she was going home to four hours of library work every weekday and each Saturday.

"It's going well," Greer said. "I visited the planning office and the state archives to see what they had there."

"Thanks," Marie said. "Anything useful?"

"Some more data about Sacramento's history that we might find useful," Greer said. "I had to help myself and figure out how some of the things were archived, though."

"No archive staff at the State Archive, huh?" The State Archive was above the State Museum (which had, in its lifetime, somehow ended up specializing in women, history, and the arts; in Marie's mind the only improvement had been that the first section of the museum had become useful instead of being blank walls leading into the first theater).

"I didn't see any," Greer said. "I could have just picked a bad day." But she sounded doubtful, just like Marie would have been.

"But you don't think so?" Marie asked.

"No," Greer said simply. "This place - your world - is falling apart."

Marie looked up at the bus stop sign, a half a dozen feet behind Greer, and strolled towards it. "You don't have to tell me twice." The buses were becoming more infrequent, and she wasn't sure she'd seen a sixty-one bus in days, if even since she'd gotten home. "It is falling apart."

And its only salvation might be an invasion from another world that Naoko Tanaka desperately didn't want to happen. Given the likelihood of becoming a sex toy herself, Marie wasn't at all eager to have it happen herself.

"I feel sad, and it isn't even my world," Greer said. "Do you think that everybody can get their acts together out there and put things back to the way they were?"

"Albeit smaller?" Marie mused. "They'll try." Assuming Naoko's Dad didn't invade. Marie hoped again that the threat of plague would kill off interest in her world. "I want them to succeed. This is my world, after all, and... well... it's a matter of pride as a public employee."

As a public employee, she felt that she had to have pride in putting the world back together again. This was what she'd come to public service to do; to help people. No matter what people muttered about bureaucrats, quite a few of them had joined to help people. The money helped, the job security helped, but really? Working for the government was a worthy cause. For her, it had been something she'd believed in from an early age, a way to help, a way to be helpful and make changes and do what she thought was right. Of course, she'd grown up with a positive image of public employees; that's what one got for being the daughter of one.

"A matter of pride, hm?" Greer asked with a twinkle in her eye. "You did really like your job."

"As I continue to do." Marie paused. "I mean, even if it's quarterly tax returns or payments, that means somebody is out there to make them, especially if it isn't from the payroll services. People are surviving this thing, people are rebuilding. And for the one that did turn their taxes in, there have to be ten more out there. Right now I don't care if they're paying their taxes if it means they're out there, surviving."

That was the important thing. Yes, some fretted about money, some wondered if money was going to have any meaning any time soon, some eagerly made sure the money got to the state to help keep it going. There were corrupt state employees, just like there were at any job, but Marie firmly believed that there were more good people.

"Survival is a good thing," Greer agreed. "Anything else you want me to visit while downtown?"

"I was planning on going to see if the main Library branch was open," Marie said. "But I'm sure you'd enjoy that too." Maybe the community could move downtown or something like that. It would make certain things, like getting to work, much easier.

"I can do that," Greer said. "Count that as my next survey." She paused. "Are you okay?"

Marie shrugged. "I've been thinking." Before Greer had a chance to ask what about, she plowed on. "If Nezumi's folks somehow find a way to get here, would you ask them to work on getting you home?" She had no clue on how Greer felt on this. The Owens family, Naoko, and Nezumi, yes, but not the rest of the group.

"I have to confess, yes, I want to go home," Greer said. "That's where my life is, after all." After Marie nodded, accepting that yes, more people than Nezumi and Det wanted to go home, she continued. "But I'm not in a hurry. This neighborhood needs me, and as long as I'm needed, I'll stay. Besides, how often do you get to record the history of a catastrophe in another universe?"

"Not very often, I imagine," Marie said dryly. She was seeing and hearing a lot of things she'd never seen before in her life; chronicling the end of a world, a community that was not your own and wasn't even in your universe had to be a feather in one's cap.

Somehow, her world kept turning science fiction on her, from the initial disappearance to now having to deal with a potential invasion - with beings that sounded like they almost counted as an alien invasion, but not quite. Having someone archiving what was going on in a universe not even their own was out there, but not any stranger than anything else.

For that matter, she had met a real alien, telepaths, and part-humans. Even if she was somehow sent to a world where everything was normal, she had lived the experiences.

Of course, she was far more likely to end up in a world where she was a sex toy to a human-appearing non-human that bedded everything that moved above the age of consent, so the weird in her life was not likely to end. She definitely rather preferred her own, dying home to that fate.

And maybe they might still pull everything together. They had to. Marie didn't want to see her world die. She didn't mind if the others went home, but this was her world.

"No," Greer agreed. "Not something that happens very often, even here, from what you and the others have told me."

"I guess if my world's going to throw odd stuff at me, I might as well get used to it," Marie said.

"But I will go and check out that library," Greer said. "I might try the State library as well."

"That's a good idea," Marie said, surprised she hadn't thought of it. The main library was the main library of Sacramento, but the State Library was also important.

Greer placed a hand on Marie's shoulder. "I know you would have, eventually. I just want to see what's there."

"Thanks," Marie said. "I'm looking forward to checking out the state of those libraries too. There's also a smaller community library out down where Disa and Keegan are surveying, and I'm pretty sure there was a library based out of an old house somewhere midtown." She'd been there once, because they'd carried Starlog. That had been two decades before, but she'd been by the place once or twice.

"I'll check that one out, and also see what communities are out that way," Greer responded. "Do you remember the library's name?"

"I have to admit, no clue," Marie said sheepishly. "Ask one of the librarians, we probably have a list somewhere."

"I'll do that," Greer said. "We can use all the data we can get."

"I know," Marie said. "Anyway, I need to go. I've got to go home for dinner."

"Home-cooked meals from Mom," Greer said, in a kind of tone that said she was teasing Marie lightly. "Go home, have fun."

Marie gave her the best smile she could, given she was preoccupied. Part of her wanted to scream that there was an invasion going on, and the rest of her had to keep reminding herself that the invasion hadn't happened yet, might not happen at all, and planning was the key, not collapsing in panic.

Plan, not panic. Find out how people felt. She knew that Det wanted to go home and his parents wanted to stay in her world, but his parents might find Nezumi's world just as acceptable. She'd have to survey the others - all of them might be okay with going to Nezumi's world if it meant civilization and not having to return to their own. Or maybe all of them wanted fresh starts and her world, dying though it seemed to be, was that fresh start.

But first, dinner. She'd hit the Owens family tomorrow, Disa and Keegan on Wednesday, the Schultzes on Thursday. Teresa and Lucas Friday. Between that group and anybody else, she should be well-covered, and hopefully had a good idea on who she could rely on without revealing what Naoko had told her.

Oh, and eventually, if Nezumi insisted on acting the way she did, Marie needed to figure out to her mother how she'd acquired a girlfriend. She'd rather talk about the alien invasion than Nezumi, though Nezumi was part of the whole thing and they weren't really aliens. She made a note to herself to ask Naoko exactly what they were, or to at least give her some more inforation about them. A tactician Marie was most definitely not.

There were a lot of things that Marie wasn't, and she had to wonder if several or many of them were going to become things she was.

Her mother was working on dinner when she came in. Marie called a hello to her before heading upstairs to use the bathroom. Sure, she could have used the back bathroom behind the kitchen, but she liked the upstairs front bathroom. When she finished, she returned downstairs. "I think I'll have a bath this evening," she announced to the air in general and her mom in particular. "Water heater working?"

"It was, last I looked," her mom answered. "I took a shower earlier."

Marie nodded. "Great." She was looking forward to a bath. A nice relaxing bath. A bath where she could think about the whole thing and not be disturbed. At least she hoped no disturbances, like portals opening in the library or somebody's wardrobe. The last time she'd been called out of the bathroom during a bath was when someone at Claris had called her for an interview a decade or so before. That had been interesting to explain.

It hadn't gotten her a job, either. Thankfully she'd eventually found one. She helped her mom with the dishes - even with only the two of them they still set the table - and they ate dinner while talking about inconsequential things and state matters. The State Matters things were just natural; they'd worked for the same agency, after all. Things might have changed between when Marie's mother had come on board and when Marie had come on board, but they still shared a common lingo.

After finishing up the dishes - her mother had cooked, after all - Marie ran her bath and was gratified to see that yes, there was hot water. And so she ran her bath, locking the door behind her so that she could get undressed in some privacy. Not that her mom hadn't seen her naked plenty of times when she was a baby, but Marie was a bit sensitive about her form.

She selected a book from those on the little mini "bookshelf" above the toilet. Or, actually, on the toilet. She looked at it briefly, and then put it back. She had things to think about, and no time to go do things like enjoy books.

Or maybe it was a good idea after all. Becoming more anxious about things was not going to help the others one shiny bit.

 

And, oh boy, she could do anxious, even when it wasn't needed. Ninety-nine percent of the time it wasn't needed, and yet that old instinct held on. She couldn't even deal with people upset at her generically, much less specifically. Okay, she could, but not if they were talking to her. She was too empathic, too wanting to fix things, too forgiving and too folding sometimes. She didn't want people upset at her, she wanted to do good.

She could never do enough good, is what her unlogical mind told her. She hated saying no, it caused her pain and guilt afterwards. There was a reason she wasn't a parent, and a reason she wasn't in supervision.

Giving in, she picked up the book again, determined to enjoy at least some of it before she decided to put it on the toilet seat cover and then, after the bath, back on the shelf. It was a Dorothy L Sayers book, one of her mom's collection, part of the Harriet Vane series. She'd been introduced to them when her mom had introduced her to the first Harriet Vane story on the PBS series "Mystery!", devouring those books and then starting in on the rest of the series. She confessed to a liking of Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh as a direct consequence, though she also liked Gillian Roberts and Rita Mae Brown's more contemporary mysteries.

She was sure she still had the tapes somewhere; hadn't she seen the tape labeled "Gaudy Night" lately? And she was sure they were on DVD as well. Maybe next time she was hitting something with a DVD store. Maybe that Blockbuster the next strip mall over from her usual grocery store might have it.

Funny how she'd gotten into fiction. She loved reading, she loved losing herself in amazing worlds and storylines and everything. If it was a good book, she'd read it. Heck, she'd read "Man O' War" when someone had given it to her years ago, and she wasn't particularly into horse books. She still hadn't read "The Black Stallion". But she loved reading. She'd had a subscription to "Fantasy and Science Fiction" for several years, and had read every issue of Asimov's when she'd been in college, since the library had kept up a subscription.

She slipped into the bath, reading a few pages of the book. She found herself unable to slip in to Lord Peter Wimsey's world, as anxious as she was about what was going on. Not with an invasion going on far more insidious than the one that the people of Lord Peter Wimsey's world were to face in a few years.

And yet... and yet she had to let go. For her sanity. She couldn't think of an invasion that might or might not happen twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. She'd be having stomach ulcers before she turned thirty five.

Best to stick to her idea. Find out things, plan things, get ready to run if Naoko and Nezumi's dad showed an interest in her. That would work. The world wouldn't end.

She tried to relax for the rest of her bath.

Teresa and Lucas showed up at the library the next day, and Marie took the time to take both of them aside and ask them questions after they updated their information on the survey. "Would you want to go home if Nezumi's folks offered you a portal? This is assuming they find their way here, of course." From what Naoko had told her, this was more of a "when" and not a "if", but she didn't want to disclose that to everybody until she was more certain if and when it would happen.

"If?" Teresa asked. "Yes. We like helping, but this isn't our home."

"But we'll stay as long as we're needed," Lucas reassured her. "I believe we're here for a reason, and we'll be here as long as we need to be."

"We do have obligations in our own world," Teresa pointed out. "Depends on how long it takes to get home."

"I forget how busy teenagers are nowadays," Marie mused with a smile. "Got to be worse in the future. I'm surprised you have any time to yourselves."

Teresa grinned back. "We do... a little. Thanks."

"No problem," Marie said. She was sure that most peoples' attitudes would be the same - and even the Owens family might be interested in a world more populated and less dead, if it didn't mean going home. She'd have to ask them for sure.

Disa and Keegan (who she'd learned were young-looking adults instead of the teenagers she'd initially presumed them to be) also came in during that shift. "Honestly, we don't care," Disa had said for the two of them. "We'd be happy to live here. There's so much to see, so much to be a part of."

"Even if this is a dead world?" Marie asked.

"Dead to you," Disa had pointed out, "Not to us. Actually, I like how sparse it is out here - I'm not afraid of any h-people out here, and this is a good place to live. I'm not sure I would even want to pass through a world so... populated on my way home."

"You like being alone, too," Marie said, her face quirking up in a smile.

"I like not being a target," Disa said. "I grew up on a world far from here, and there are certain... differences." She looked over at Keegan.

"We aren't human," Keegan said simply. "But some of our ancestors were."

Marie suddenly wondered exactly how many of her neighbors were human. Mr. Owens wasn't, Mrs. Owens wasn't full, Naoko and Nezumi weren't full. Now Disa and Keegan weren't at all, though they spoke English.

Maybe they weren't speaking English at all, and neither were Nezumi and Naoko, or anybody else. That would explain the sisters' excellent English capabilities, something they might lose if the portal opened and they went home.

Good reason not to let herself go through the portal if and when it opened; her Japanese was only good enough to excuse herself and ask for water. And say she was okay. And ask how people were. Okay, and ask if someone wanted to eat. And the numbers one to ten. Some of the colors too. Maybe she knew more Japanese than she thought, but it was still lousy. As she'd told Nezumi, she'd never passed JLPT 4.

"I don't think you're even speaking English," Marie said.

"I think we are," Disa said. "This is not our home language, but we speak and understand it as if we'd spoken it all our lives."

Okay, that explained things. Definitely an interesting thing to find out - and a damn good way to make sure the new immigrants could understand each other and the new world.

"That's a good thing to have, actually," Marie said with relief.

Two less to worry about, too. Yeah, Disa and Keegan were humanoid aliens with human ancestry. Somehow that was becoming rapidly not weird. Marie would have been a bit more excited if she wasn't facing an invasion of other humanoid aliens that apparently had no human ancestry.

She let Disa and Keegan go off, after promising that no, she wouldn't tell the others that they weren't human. This was a big thing for her, because they'd trusted her not to tell. And if they didn't want her to tell, she wouldn't tell.

When Dr. Schultz came in, she asked her the same thing. "No," Dr. Schultz had said firmly. "You need me here... and I don't feel any need to go home."

That was a good sign. Though bad in a way, if the people who didn't want to go home, like Naoko and Dr. Schultz, and the people who did want to go home, like Det and Nezumi, came into conflict. She wasn't going to be able to deal if they didn't, she knew it.

"I'm curious," Marie said. "I've become recently aware of an anomaly that's affecting at least four people - immigrants - here. What's your native language, Dr. Schultz?"

"English, of course," Dr. Schultz replied, mystified. "I live outside of Washington, D.C."

"Okay," Marie said. "That's a good thing to know."

"Do some people here not speak English that I don't know about?" Dr. Schultz asked.

"Let's just say that some of our neighbors have picked up instantaneous fluency in English," Marie told her. That kept Disa and Keegan's true origins a secret, while giving useful information to Dr. Schultz, who seemed to Marie like an intelligent woman.

"Oh," Dr. Schultz said. "Interesting." Wheels seemed to be metaphorically turning in her head.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Marie asked.

"My world was... well, we made contact with aliens about two decades ago. I was just thinking of how they acquired English and the rest of the world languages."

"Are they friendly aliens?" Marie asked, curious.

"Depends on your point of view," Dr. Schultz said. "Some people adore them, others have said they have a secret agenda. Personally? I know they have a secret agenda, and they're not afraid to experiment on humans. I have something in my head thanks to that."

Marie winced at the implication that Dr. Schultz had been experimented on.

"Exactly," Dr. Schultz said, and the conversation was finished.

As she was tidying up, Naoko came to her. "What are you finding out?" she asked.

"I knew Det Owens really wants to go home," Marie said. "His parents don't, but I don't know if they'd want to live in your world, either. Teresa and Lucas I think would be happy to go home, but they'll be here as long as we need them to be. Disa and Keegan are firmly not wanting to go either home or to your world, and Dr. Schultz is the same." She made a face. "Dr. Schultz has been experimented on."

"So have I," Naoko said. "Another reason I do not want to go home. A lot of the information those in my world have about those of us who are half-breeds is because of my father's kind's experimentation upon me."

Marie shivered. "Great," she said, feeling like it was an understatement, but not quite sure what the right word would be at that moment.

She felt like running was not a bad idea after all.

"I'll teach you more of the language," Naoko said. "In the meantime, you might want to start planning another meeting. I can give you what to expect tactics-wise if you can get everybody together."

"Good idea," Marie said. "And I think we'll have an ally in Dr. Schultz. It sounds like she has an idea of the horrors some of us might be facing, too."

"There might be others with the same experience," Naoko said. "In any case, we have to bring the neighborhood together. We have no choice in the matter, and we also need an escape plan for you, if for nobody else."

When the day was over, Marie walked back to her home. She was just opening the gate when Disa rushed up to her, followed shortly by Keegan. "Marie!"

"Yes?" Marie asked. She had a feeling she didn't really want to know what was going on, but she didn't have a choice, being information gathering central. Single point of contact - she'd been that before, she was apparently that again.

"There's a man shooting fireballs!" Disa's excitement was almost palpable.

"What?" Marie looked at them. "Where? When? How? Who?" Okay, that was all five of the question words, and she was aware that Disa probably couldn't answer them, but fireballs? Naoko had said that her father's people were warriors, so this might be one of them.

On the other hand, it may not be. It all depended on what she found out and what Naoko said about the description. It wasn't like she was in a neighborhood of odd people, so someone throwing fireballs wasn't totally impossible.

In fact, she bet that ever since the whole thing had started, someone throwing fireballs was probably not uncommon.

"Over on the intersection of Florin and Florin Mall drive, where there's construction going on," Disa said. "The man was throwing fireballs at the construction site!"

"Florin Town Center," Marie mumbled, though she was not quite sure of the spelling. Florin Towne Center? Florin Town Centre? Florin Towne Centre? It wasn't like she'd cared. The last time she'd been that way was to turn her cable box in before she'd moved to Blue Bay Harbor.

The former Florin Mall was quite a distance away, some thirty minutes by bus. Not an imminent threat, then, unless the person could fly. "What did the man look like?"

The two gave her dueling descriptions; all she got out of it was long wavy brown hair under a baseball cap, and a vest. Maybe some irate trucker or something. Or maybe not. She hoped. There were several freeways between her and Florin Mall - Florin whatever the hell it was now going to be called - and maybe he'd skip her quiet neighborhood.

"Not right next door," she said to them. "We should be safe for the moment." Disa nodded, as if she'd been seeking Marie's reassurance, as if Marie could make everything right. Hah! "I'll walk you guys home, if you want."

Disa and Keegan both smiled in relief. Marie wondered when she'd become the neighborhood leader and protector. She certainly hadn't done that on purpose.

She walked them home, not wanting to bring up how alarmed they'd been once the excitement had worn off, and wondered internally if they could do some flying of their own. Which she also put on her mental list about if any of Naoko's father's people could do. Flying was definitely a tactical advantage. One that she had to know about for the sake of the neighborhood, at least if their potential enemies could fly.

"If you'll keep an eye out for them," Marie said, "I'm sure we'll be okay."

"I've never seen a human that could throw fire," Disa said, once both the excitement and fear seemed to be wearing off. "Is this... usual?"

"Not here, at least not before... everything," Marie said. "I mean, people don't just spontaneously cast fireballs, or at least they didn't when my life was normal. I mean, I'm normal. I can't, say, set that dry ivy over on the street on fire...."

The ivy suddenly caught on fire. Marie blinked. "At least I don't think I just set that on fire. I hope I didn't. Fire is not a good thing."

Nope, fire was not a good thing. And, as she stared at the impromptu fire, she hoped she hadn't started it. "Figures if I did," she muttered to herself.

Disa put her hand on Marie's shoulder. "Maybe you have talents that you don't know about?" she asked gently.

"If I did," Marie said, "Wouldn't it scare you? The fireball man did."

"No, because we know you," Disa said. "Can anybody help you with this?"

Marie shrugged. "I don't know. I'll ask around, but pyrokinesis, if I have it? I hope it's not common."

She was so not a warrior, and she didn't want to be a community defender. She hadn't even wanted the leadership role she seemed to have wandered in to.

Disa nodded. "We know you'll do your best."

"I'll at least try," Marie said weakly. Yeah, being a warrior was so not her thing. Her specialty was information, not war.

She made a note to herself to study up on tactics, especially involving fire. She also made a note to see if she was really causing the fires or if there was something else to worry about. She almost hoped that it was she who had caused the dry ivy to catch on fire; it made things a little simpler than having an unknown agent running about.

Leaving the two to their own home, she walked back to her place. In order to test her theory, she needed someplace where the fire wouldn't spread, but a place that was semi-private. The driveway behind where she lived, or rather, the driveway behind the first block of condos was the best place until she was sure. She had this thing about sitting in the middle of the strip mall trying to set stuff on fire. One, it tipped her hand if she did have powers, and second, it made her look stupid if she didn't have powers.

She gathered some spare sticks from the trees across the street, and walked through the front door, calling to her mom that she'd be right back. Fortunately, her mom wasn't in the kitchen. Probably upstairs or something.

Opening the garage door - and closing it - she stepped outside, carrying her sticks to the back of the next group of condos. Setting most of her bundle down, she selected three and placed them in front of her. "Let's see," she said. "Fire is caused by the rapid agitation of molecules, so...."

She imagined the molecules in the wood going faster and faster, faster and faster....

One stick burst into flames, or at least one end did, the end that she'd been focusing on. "Wow," she breathed. Could she reproduce her experiment?

She blew out the fire, and then remembered that she hadn't blown out the ivy. Hopefully there wasn't enough debris. No, there wasn't, and everything should be okay. She hoped.

Maybe she should check it out, go back and make sure the fire had gone out before experimenting more. So she did.

Putting her sticks to one side, she reversed her course, snagging the gate key on the way back in, and walking back to the complex. The fire was still burning. Marie grabbed a bucket that had been left nearby, filled it from a nearby spigot, and poured water on the fire. It satisfactorily went out.

"Sorry," she said softly. She was usually more responsible than she'd been about leaving the fire going, especially since it was her fire, the fire that she'd apparently caused.

She was responsible for the fire, just like she was responsible for the neighborhood. The fire had to go out; the neighborhood had to be kept safe. This was part of who she was. A warrior she was not, but a mother hen? She could do that just fine. Part of her being wanted to help whenever she could.

Somehow, she'd never thought that being helpful meant defending her neighborhood from human and nonhuman alike that meant it harm. She'd always been a pacifist, like her father and mother had been pacifists, and she wasn't sure if being a warrior was what she was meant to be.

Of course, she might not have any choice in the matter when it came down to it.

She made sure the fire was out one last time before returning home to her own sticks. Trying a second time, she confirmed that she was responsible for the ivy fire, and that she was capable of pyrokinesis, and what in the heck was she going to do about it?

Nothing, at the moment. Of that, she was sure.

She had too many responsibilities to do more than make sure she didn't set anything on fire. Too many hopes pinned on her to do anything more than keep her people safe, keep her neighborhood safe, from both herself and from the outside world.

For if she was to hope everything would go back to normal, she had to control and ignore this new gift. Pretend that everything was normal and nothing was wrong with her and if she could beat back everything threatening her world she could keep it safe.

She put the sticks back away, promising to herself that she would practice more and more. However, she had other things to worry about, and one of them was the fact that she was the one making dinner that night. She wondered if the IKEA in West Sac was still intact and decided next Sunday that she'd take her bicycle up to West Sac and check it out. Maybe the power was still on and the freezers working, and therefore they'd have Swedish Meatballs at the food mart.

Marie loved the Swedish Meatballs from IKEA, and they were out of them. Sure, her mother had recipies for that, but by and large meat was going bad now, and it looked likely that someone was going to have to grab the pre-cooked meat before it went away.

Yeah, go to IKEA next Sunday, maybe with a friend if she could get one to go. Maybe Disa or Det, if either had a bike. Or one of the adults that didn't mind going. Maybe she could discuss strategies with Naoko on the way out. She presumed Naoko knew how to ride a bike.

But at the moment, spaghetti. It would be easy to make, good with butter, and she didn't have to worry about fouling it up. Cooking had been her least favorite part of Home Ec in Jr. High, a class that she had no idea why she'd taken it.

Her mother didn't say anything awful about the spaghetti, so she figured she'd made it right. She thought briefly of Thanksgiving; about how celebrating that might get interesting if things weren't back to normal by then.

Of course, this was assuming that they hadn't either been invaded by nonhumans from a Japan in a different dimension, or that she hadn't found herself kidnapped by Nezumi or her dad and was living in that dimension.

Yeah, best not to think of that horrible prospect at the moment. Best to relax and get a good night's sleep, ask Naoko about what they should be looking out for just in case they were lucky and the portal appeared someplace else in Sacramento. For all she knew, the portal might well appear near the former Florin Mall. Whatever they were calling it – what was it again? Did she care? Again, no.

She listened carefully to news the next day, gossip going on at her downtown job. Disa wasn't the ony one who had seen the guy fireballing the construction; several others had, though maybe not in her office. A friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend. State Workers moved about, from office to office, from department to department, and even as small as their ranks were getting, people still knew each other.

Probably someone at the DMV down the street from the construction had talked to someone they knew. That would make sense; they were the nearest state agency office near to the destruction.

Nothing else weird seemed to have happened, however, for which Marie was grateful. No alien invasions or anything else supernatural. She wondered if any of her co-workers were developing powers. If they were, they certainly weren't sharing. She knew that she wouldn't.

She decided to ask her mom that evening if she'd heard anything. Maybe they could compare news and rumors, see if she'd heard anything from their federal counterparts, things like that. She suddenly wondered if whatever the INS had become – she could never remember the new name – still existed, and if their personnel had been moved to other jobs. Immigration enforcement and other immigration stuff seemed so petty and so minor at the moment.

Of course, they were welcome to come lend a hand if Sacramento suddenly had a horde of Japanese monsters for immigrants. She had to wonder how they'd process monsters with presumably no documentation.

That brought a grin to her face. She had her differences with the current version of the INS – they were part of the Department of Homeland Security, which she'd dearly love to see abolished – but she'd love to have that happen just to hear their stories. Hey, they probably had done it. Did the immigration center downtown still exist? She didn't think so. Maybe somebody knew someone who knew someone who worked for them.

"Newspaper is formed by the kanji for new and hear; hear is formed by ear and gate. New stuff is heard by putting an ear to the gate. Shinbun." She wasn't sure where she'd picked that up, but she certainly remembered it.

She also knew that the compound in Chinese was different, but she had no clue what. She'd had it explained to her, but as heck she couldn't remember it. She wasn't sure what the word in Swedish was, she'd have to ask her mom. She did know the main big newspaper was the Dagens Nyheter, but what that meant, she wasn't sure.

In any case, gossip worked better in this world where she hadn't seen the Sacramento Bee in days. Heck, she hadn't checked if the News and Review was still running, but she doubted it. Of course, the scrappy independent might be going where the main paper was not. And despite her general dislike for the conservative Union, she should check to see if it was being sold.

Anything would be better than nothing, after all. She had the desire to see a real, live newspaper in her hands, one that was post-happenings, present time, containing all the news that was going on in the world.

Of course, given everything that was happening, she might have to wait a while. Assuming that her community survived its hurdles, that Sacramento survived its hurdles, then everything would start falling into place instead of the "let's try to keep everything together" feeling that her world seemed to currently have.

State employees were a community, connected to one another through friends and coworkers and friends of friends and former coworkers of coworkers. They had a vested interest in the State maintaining its balance, coming back together. But on the other hand, there was the sense that the government was falling apart, just as they fell apart when the friend, or the coworker, or the ex-coworker or the friend of a friend disappeared. Links were lost, important links that meant something in a world that was dying.

And even as people forged new links, they couldn't replace the old ones, the ones that died, the ones that disappeared. Something that was a part of Marie's life before was going to be gone forever, and there was nothing the Marie could do with it. She couldn't even define it.

How was she to apply to her community what she didn't understand? Of course, all of that might have to wait until the whole mess with Nezumi's potential portal was over. But then again, that portal might never happen, so she might as well both plan and build.

Both ways, she needed to make her neighborhood into a family. One that would defend itself, or retain links if they all split up. People who knew someone who knew someone, who knew someone. That was how the State stayed together, really, that connection, and maybe it would work for the place she called home.

She kept that in mind on the way home, or rather on the way to the library. As she pedaled her bike down to the library, bag carefully stowed in the carrier, she realized she had a lot of work to do.

And as Nezumi appeared before her, she realized that she had a lot of personal work to do, including figuring out whether it was better to turn the girl down or hope that she got bored with Marie before her parents appeared. She stopped the bike, unsure as to what the girl wanted.

"I missed you," Nezumi said, capturing Marie's hands in her own as Marie stood there.

"Um, arigato?" Marie replied. Why Nezumi missed her when they barely had had any time to talk, she wasn't sure. Of course, Naoko's words had indicated that Nezumi was pretty capricious, so maybe this was normal for her.

And it made her realize that by her standards, Nezumi was short. Five feet, if that.

Nezumi laughed. "You are so wasted on Naoko," she said. "And everything else. But Naoko, you're really wasted on."

"Eh?" Marie asked. Did the girl somehow think she was... dating... Naoko? The whole idea seemed so laughable. But it made sense. Nezumi may have felt that Naoko was taking her 'girlfriend' away from her, and of course, with sibling rivalry, she probably couldn't let that happen. "Naoko?"

Nezumi laughed again. "Big sister has that effect on people. She takes after Dad much more than she thinks."

"You don't think she and I...." Marie was pondering Nezumi's words, trying to integrate them into the rest of the puzzle as well as figure out what to do with Nezumi.

"I always did envy Naoko's ability to sleep with everything intelligent that moves," Nezumi said. "I prefer girls, I can do guys, but Naoko? As long as you're intelligent, it doesn't matter what sex or species."

Marie tried to imagine Naoko coupling with anything and failed. Naoko seemed asexual, not interested. She said as much to Nezumi. "Somehow, your sister's always struck me as celibate, if not asexual."

"Well, she's not, she just likes to think she is," Nezumi said. "She's a very sexual creature - dad's favorite. She just likes to deny what she is. Forget all this nonsense about normal lives and jobs and everything, she was born to have sex. She's just in denial, because she certainly was active when she was my age."

"Ah," Marie said neutrally, deciding to get the other side of the story from Naoko before considering that line of thought further. As she'd said to Nezumi, Naoko seemed pretty darn asexual to her, and even if she'd just eventually renounced sex, she was still who she was.

Nezumi wrapped an arm around her. "You'll see when we get home. I'm sure Naoko will go back to her own ways when she's given a chance."

Somehow, Marie doubted Naoko wanted to go back to being sexually active. But one could never tell. Maybe she did miss her home, her time, her world. Again, something to ask Naoko... if Nezumi would let her go. "Ah, Nezumi?"

"Yes?" Nezumi asked cheerfully. "What?"

"Um. I have to go to work," Marie pointed out. "And I'm not involved with your sister."

"Ah, but is she involved with you?" Nezumi said wisely.

"That is a very good philosophical question, and I'll ponder it later, when I'm not on the clock," Marie said.

Nezumi pouted at that, but her face soon cleared. "I guess you have to discover that for yourself," she said.

Marie nodded. "Yeah, I do." When Nezumi let go of her, she got back on her bike, bicycling back to the library to start her day... and maybe to talk to Naoko about what her sister had said.

It was about three hours into her shift before she got a chance to corner the older Tanaka sister. "My sister is delusional," Naoko said finally.

"The sexually active with everything that moves doesn't really sound like you," Marie said. "But I'm more worried that she thinks I'm the rope in a tug-of-war with you."

"She is correct that I was sexually active," Naoko said. "And I am omnisexual, not bisexual like she is." As Marie blinked at that, she added, "I do have hormones, and I do enjoy sex. I just don't want to be worshipped, and that's what most sex involves for me. At least the nonhumans of my father's kind aren't inclined to do that."

"Oh, good," Marie said. "Would you... go back to being sexual if you went home?" She felt stupid for asking, but she couldn't quite stop herself from doing so.

"Probably," Naoko said. "I would not likely have any choice. I'd either have to be active in order to enjoy my own freedom, of I'd be drugged up enough that I wouldn't care."

Marie shivered. "They'd do that to you?" she asked, horrified. Actually, horrified and fascinated, but mostly horrified.

Naoko nodded. "They'd let me choose first, become active, and I'd probably take it. I know how to conform to what my father wants me to be, and I know when to slip away and be myself. So, it probably wouldn't come to drugging, unless they decide I'm not active enough."

Marie shivered again. "Still...."

"It's not a fate I would wish on anyone," Naoko confirmed. "I wanted to be normal, be a librarian, live like everybody else. But until I got here, I could never really have that. I could pretend. I have pretended. Here? I'm free to be Naoko, and not my father's daughter."

Thinking of what Det had said about his parents wanting to get completely away from tradition, and the fact that Disa and Keegan seemed in no hurry to get back, Marie said, "I think you're not the only one looking for a new beginning."

"I would imagine that I'm not," Naoko replied. "I think that maybe your world is a place to make a new beginning."

"One hell of a rough beginning, though," Marie pointed out. "We're falling apart, trying to cling to what we had before. I mean, there's no meat that's not cooked, and the only dairy we have is powdered milk." She thought about how much her mom had disliked powdered milk, how it was the only milk left. She wondered also if people were keeping the yogurt cultures going. She'd learned how to do that once, but she'd have no clue now that it had been some twelve years before. She had a suspicion that she was going to have to relearn it.

That, and learn how to make soymilk. Soymilk was not dairy at all and might be easier to make. There was soy milk, soy ice cream, soy lots of things. Until the dairies were reestablished, or at least the method of distribution was reestablished, dairy products were out.

And Crystal, no matter how much she loved it, was not known for its preservatives. It went quickly. Though maybe the preservative lack wasn't a bad thing. Heaven knew that they preserved more than the milk nowadays. Yeah, maybe Crystal's quick expiration dates was a good thing.

"That doesn't matter," Naoko said. "Or if it does, it's a price to pay for freedom. There's no place I could go in my world where I could completely escape my legacy; here, nobody knows what I am or cares, or could find me."

"I guess in that way, this is a good thing to happen to you," Marie said. "To be able to get away. Maybe if Nezumi wasn't here, it would be safer for you."

Naoko gazed out the window. "I wish I could say that was true, but the only real impact she has here is that my people would find it easier to focus the portal with two of us here." Her face was unreadable, but Marie swore she saw guilt in those dark eyes. "I'm my father's favorite daughter; he'd be looking for me regardless. I can never run from him for long, and it may be that even another dimension might not be a refuge for me." She turned to Marie. "If Nezumi's actions and words do any good here, it's to remind me that I must keep vigilant if I'm to live my life as I want."

Marie nodded. "I'm going to need a run-down in detail of what to look for. There's a possibility that your people, if they come, may not have a portal open smack in the middle of the neighborhood; in fact, it's entirely possible that they might end up elsewhere in the city, wherever you landed, or even in the equivalent of your town in Japan."

"My father and the others landing anywhere but here would only delay the inevitable," Naoko said. "So, yes, you do need to know. I hope that they do land in your world's Japan, though, as it would slow them down. Even father would need time to fly across the ocean, not to mention he would find it incredibly boring. And boredom is his enemy."

"Probably not very helpful to the local people, though," Marie pointed out.

"They'll live," Naoko said, dismissing that seemingly out of hand. "He might find it interesting, but the focus will be on myself and Nezumi. Then once he finds me, they'll reestablish the portal here. If it's my home, he has to interfere."

"And this is your home, not over there," Marie said, understanding. Well, at least everybody else would be spared while he was looking for Naoko and Nezumi, and after that? Well, for sure it would be her neighborhood that suffered, not anybody else's. Maybe the entirety of Sacramento, if Naoko's father decided he liked her home town. Just what her city needed; an invasion when it really needed to recover.

"This has become my home ever since I arrived here," Naoko said. "I've made it my home. And I'll do my best to see that it isn't taken over. At least by my father." Whether she would stop the rest of her kin was not said, but Marie had to hope that she meant the whole bunch of them. "Or any of the others."

Marie nodded. "Good. Because we'll need your experience in order to save ourselves." She paused. "So, your father can fly? Can any others?"

"Several," her friend - well, co-worker and co-defender - said. "Being aerial is quite the advantage."

"Except when most have it," Marie pointed out. "How many? Which ones do we have to worry about?"

Naoko looked thoughtful, almost silently counting. "Two high-level ones, those are the ones we have to worry about. The human-looking ones. One of those is my father; he can teleport to a limited extent, but thankfully, not far. He flies if he has to go more than half a mile, because teleportation wears him out."

"Flying and teleportation. Got it." So far, so bad. "Mind control?"

"Would you believe the same two fliers?" Naoko said. "Fortunately, father can only mind-control others of his kind; the other one is more dangerous. He can throw fire, but he prefers to use mind control over targets. Less damage to experimental subjects, he says."

"Ow," Marie said, deciding that she didn't want to get in that one's way. "How dangerous is he to us?"

"Not much, unless he wants to figure out how we - you, I, and the others - are immune. You and your mother, being native to this world, are likely to be test subjects. However, as cruel as he is, he at least is sensible."

"The cruel one is sensible. Okay...." How could Naoko call anyone sensible who was cruel?

Of course, Naoko, from the sounds of it, had been subject to a very odd upbringing, a not-very-standard childhood. Maybe he had made sense, maybe Naoko had just gotten used to him. Stockholm syndrome.

"He is sensible. He just has no sense of morals when it comes to humans. Or part-humans." Naoko did wince at that. "When you have dealt with my father as much as I have, beings that make sense are a relief. Of course, not all of my father's kind are cruel, and some may intervene. Several are honorable, and one of the best took form as a wise wanderer. So wise and so wandering that I've barely even seen him, though I have met some of his children."

"Oh," Marie said. "So, they're just like humans, then," Marie said. "Warlike, but capable of wisdom and good."

Naoko nodded. "They are. Despite their powers and their warrior pasts, they are all individuals. That's why it's hard to say in general about their powers. I'd have to list abilities for all fifty three of them."

"I'd just like to concentrate on the dangerous ones," Marie said. "The ones that would love to invade my town, and in least one case, carry me off."

"Two, actually," Naoko pointed out. "Two of them besides Nezumi if we're not careful."

"Ow," Marie replied, brushing her hair away from her ear. "Definitely a meeting is in order."

She'd first had a meeting to help conduct a survey of the surrounding areas; now they might need that data in case Naoko's father took over. That meant Marie and anyone else would have to reinterpret that data in tactical ways, as resources and living places and hiding places. None of which Marie had any clue about other than the resource thing, and not in a tactical way. "If you'll schedule us a room, we'll co-run a meeting, maybe some of them have some ideas on what to do."

Naoko nodded briefly. "I will," she promised, before resuming her duties.

Marie went back to her duties, too.

A few days passed. People gathered data, lived, hung around the library. Some had somehow found or made jobs for themselves, keeping the area as neat as possible. Some welcomed newcomers who had wandered off the Interstate, off of 43rd or off of 35th. Catherine continued to be sick and away from the library, though Angela said that she was still with them. Angela herself looked like she might be next.

"The one good thing," Naoko said, "Is if they invade, they might find a cure for this. They might be able to save your world."

Save the world, at the cost of Naoko's freedom and possibly Marie's. The good of the many superseded the good of the few, and even the one.

It was a heady thing to think about. It might mean the betterment of her world, albeit turned strange by alien invaders who weren't from outer space. Maybe being invaded would be, for most of the people on Earth, a good thing. Especially if they could be convinced to go away, leave the world alone after fixing it up, taking their portal and those they wanted home with them.

Marie had never wanted to be the one that had to be sacrificed to save the world. But she had, in her life, been at suicidal ideation, several times. Moments where the pain, mental not physical, had been above her ability to cope. Planning to leave the earthly realm behind had seemed an act to save the world from her worthlessness.

Now, could she bear to live, to become what Nezumi wanted her to become, to save the world in fact? Surrender her life, she probably would not. But her dignity, her individuality? She might lose those.

She wondered if suicide would be a good option there, too, and wondered at the fact that she could be dispassionate about such a thing. But when one had contemplated suicide more than once in one's life, one became more accepting of that sad end.

At the end of her library shift one Saturday, she took a walk down to the levee, down to the river, down near Captain's Table, the unfinished hotel and the bike trail. It was deserted, had been deserted like everything else seemed deserted.

"Marie?" Disa's voice came hesitantly behind her.

She turned around. "Hi, Disa. What can I do for you?" The old customer service mannerisms were easily slipped into, the putting of one's own desires aside to serve the customer.

"Are you all right?" the young woman - alien - asked. She was glowing a slight, subtle blue, like there was a blue aura around her. The nonhuman aspect of her ancestry.

"Just... thinking," Marie said. "About the river, and how it flows."

Disa looked confused, so Marie elaborated. "There's not really a way to go down to the river right here, but there is down the way. The water is shallow there, but the river's fast-moving. It's easy to be deceived into thinking you're safe, just wading in the shallows."

"Oh," Disa said. Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't that.

"I've lived near this river most of my life," Marie said. "Within a few miles, usually. I didn't really appreciate that until I grew up." She wondered if they had rivers on Disa's world, and decided they probably did. Disa didn't seem that strange to her.

None of them did, really. They were all immigrants of one kind or another, but their frames of reference translated. Or at least the instantaneous proficiency in English did. Maybe that helped translate everything else, made these people seem less threatening to the natives of their new home.

Except unlike the threat of Naoko's kin, these people seemed benevolent, willing to work to get things up and moving. True neighbors, all of them. She wanted to hug the lot of them, tell them that everything was going to be all right. Except there was no threat that they knew of, unless Naoko had said something to the others.

"I moved away for two jobs, and before that, to college," Marie continued when Disa didn't say anything. "I've lived most of my life here, though, and they were never home. Here was. You've probably passed by my high school and my middle school; others have passed by my elementary school and preschool. This is where I grew up, where I worked my first jobs. I don't want to see it go away, by everything I know dying, or by other means." She didn't specify the other means, but she knew she'd have to eventually. They were going to have to be told, and they were going to have to be prepared. Disa seemed so innocent, Keegan too. Even Det seemed more up on threats than they did. And yet she was going to have to tell them.

She was going to have to tell all of them. And she hated delivering bad news.

Disa nodded. "It's your home," she said simply.

"Yeah, it is," Marie agreed. Her home. Had such a nice ring to it, really. Home was where the heart was. Home was where you went back to. So true, in her case.

Her home was potentially under attack, though that might or might not happen. "I wanted to come out here and think about where we are and where we're going. Naoko has some stuff to talk about as well." Oh boy, did Naoko have stuff to talk about.

"I'll be there," Disa promised. "Keegan and I will always come."

It was a statement of such plain truth that Marie wanted to cry. Disa and Keegan, Naoko, the Owens family, all had made her home theirs. She hoped they would be so open as to be there to defend it if needed.

The talked for a little longer, and then Disa left her alone. Strangely, Marie would have never dared be on the bike trail alone, all isolated apart from the freeway, in the days Before. But now the world was deserted, now that she knew practically all her neighbors and what was out there, she was not afraid.

Sunday came all too fast, though, and with it a growing dread, one totally separate from the normal worries of having to break into a store to get food. Eventually, she'd find a key to the place. She hoped. Nobody had come back, as far as she could tell, to get the money she'd placed in the spot she'd hid it in. Maybe nobody was alive to claim the grocery store as theirs. Maybe nobody would ever come back to claim most of the abandoned stores. The bicycle salesman had been the last salesperson she'd seen, and she had doubts as to his continued existence.

"Thank you all for coming," she said as she started the meeting, aware that Nezumi was not there and glad the girl wasn't. Maybe Naoko had psyched her into not dropping in on this meeting; Marie had a feeling that the girl wouldn't take the fact that they might be looking at ways to defend themselves from her kin too well. She was, after all, under the delusion that Naoko was trying to date Marie, instead of being co-workers and, Marie hoped, friends.

"We're getting a lot of good data." Now she sounded like her supervisors at work, trying to praise. Yes, there had been a lot of good data collected, but her phrase sounded so trite, so patronizing, that she was afraid to admit that she'd said it. "I think we'll have a pretty good idea of how things stand, both in our neighborhood and Sacramento in general. Eventually, we'll have enough to share with the police station over on Freeport, and we'll get more data that way. In addition, we've got those of us working downtown collecting information about the rest of Sacramento as well." Just because the end of the world seemed to be coming didn't mean that State Employees were going to move closer to downtown, though she had to wonder how many living on ranches in the countryside were able to get to the center of town.

"I'd like to do that in about two weeks or so, if possible," Marie said. "At the very least, we have a solid idea of the households between us and the river. What else we can get, we'll take. We'll just consolidate the data before we go, whoever does go." She had no clue who that would be and hoped it wouldn't be her.

"Any questions?" Marie asked. This would be the simple part, she hoped, with questions of mapping and exploration and all the things they needed taken care of. The next part, Naoko's part, would be quite interesting.

"Not a question, but a comment: There aren't a lot of hospitals down here, but I've been looking at a pediatric office that I can convert into a care center if needed. There are a few dentists' offices I can raid if needed as well." Dr. Schultz had a clipboard. Which was not surprising, since Dr. Schultz seemed always organized.

"That would be the pediatricians near Florin and Greenhaven, right?" Marie asked. "Before the freeway?" She would have been surprised if they were intact, if the stores in the strip mall nearby hadn't been intact too.

Dr. Schultz nodded. "That's the one I'm thinking of."

"It'll be a bit of a walk for us," Marie acknowledged. "But then again, we're not in an area ourselves thick with medical offices." She tried to think of any nearby, but the only one she could think of was the dentist's office in the same strip mall as Barnhill's.

"What if the person isn't mobile?" Det pointed out.

"Hm," Marie said. "I'm sure there's something around here that we could use."

"Large carts," Mrs Owens - Danielle said. "Or something similar."

Marie looked out the window, and remembered something that might work. "There's a fire station over near where Disa and Keegan live; if they don't have an ambulance there, they'll probably have some note as to where the ambulance is parked. Stretchers."

"Not so good on rough pavement," Dr. Schultz pointed out, "But still, better than nothing."

"Everything wheeled, with the exception of maybe a car or truck, is going to have that problem," Teresa said.

"Well, we could try to push the entire ambulance in an emergency," Marie pointed out. Everybody stared at her as if she'd just suggested that the moon was made of cheese.

"That might be harder and slower than pushing the stretcher," Dr. Schultz pointed out. "Though it could be more cushioned. I don't know, I've never had to push an ambulance before."

"I hope we never have to," Marie said. "I'm just proposing it as a distant possibility."

More discussion followed. They'd come to a workable decision over the ambulance - figuring they'd test run it once they found an ambulance to test it on, assuming there was no fire or ambulance people around to mind - and then it was time to discuss the subject that Marie didn't want to discuss, but had to.

"Naoko has something to discuss with us too," she said. "Naoko?"

"You should all be aware," Naoko said, "That there might be an invasion coming."

"Invasion?" Disa asked, wide-eyed. Marie winced at so innocent the girl sometimes seemed, and wondered how old Disa was, because she'd never asked.

"My home dimension - or rather, my father's people - have technology that can connect dimensions. Also, my father thinks I am about eight years old and need protecting."

"They might also," Marie added when Naoko seemed unable to, "Like this world too much and set up a place here. In Sacramento. The portal being here, in our neighborhood, because that's where Naoko is."

"And my sister Nezumi as well, though that would be a secondary consideration," Naoko added. "They will primarily come here for me. The plague may be a deterrent, but they might just try to immunize themselves instead of taking myself and Nezumi - and anybody else they fancy - back home."

"From what Naoko tells me," Marie said, "They'd find it pretty handy to establish a base here... we've got a really small population and a pretty big city to take over. I really don't want to face the reality of Sacramento being run by non-humans - albeit native to this planet - who think the height of fun is having sex with their harems."

"So, invasion force?" Dr. Schultz asked. "What are we looking at?"

"Not a huge one, unless you count the followers," Naoko said. "But every single one of them are warriors. Not all of them are in it for the sex, some are serious and would love to have and run their own country. This city would be a good base for them, even if they never decide to invade someplace else."

"So, no zombie goats or anything like that?" Disa asked. She looked like Naoko's relatives - or something like them - was going to invade any moment. And it disturbed her, at least mildly.

Keegan shrugged and said, "Someone in our complex was very fond of horror movies."

"Horror movies aside, from what Naoko tells me, this isn't an if, this is a when."

"Yes, a when," Naoko confirmed. "And no zombie goats. The only goat there is Cap."

"Cap?" Teresa asked. "Do I want to know?" She actually seemed amused, despite the going-to-be-serious discussion.

"Short for Capricorn," Naoko said. "Hopefully you will not find out why he is named so."

"I don't want to know," Marie confirmed.

"Since you're likely to know him up close and personal," Naoko said quietly to her, "I fear you will."

Mrs. Owens, sitting closest to the exchange, coughed up the coffee she'd been drinking. Her husband helped her to stop choking.

"What?" Disa asked, far enough away not to hear the whole exchange, but clearly curious.

"My father's kind likes humans. Very much like humans, most of them. And some of them are very sexually active. Some here are the kind of people they'd like to have in their little harems, if even for a little while. It's unpleasant to hope that they'd invade here, but it's better to allow them time to get bored of all the new things and move on. Or at least the more fickle ones. It's the ones that aren't so fickle that I'd worry about."

"I'd rather not have Sacramento renamed New Tokyo, or even Sakuramento," Marie said, trying to give the Japanese rendering of her home town's name semi-accurately.

"Could they cure the plague?" Angela asked. "Because there are two of us that have it." The unspoken confirmation about Catherine was explicit in her statement.

"Beware of greeks bearing gifts," Dr. Schultz said. "Just because they might cure us doesn't mean we might not regret it. I've learned that just because someone seems benevolent doesn't mean they are."

"I have lots of painful experience dealing with my father's kind. Most of them are not benevolent. If they cure you, it's because they find you useful, or cute, or are doing it for some other non-benevolent reason," Naoko added.

"There is an alien species that came to my world several years ago," Dr. Schultz added. "They need humans to fight their wars for them - they're pretty much energy beings. They've been at war with their solid cousins for millenia, humans are only their latest soldiers. They killed the species that altered themselves and their cousins into what they became. Left only one member alive, and killed him when he got released by accident a few years ago. The fact that he was around long enough to father a child was a miracle... and the fact that these aliens don't know that he did is another one. So, yes, they'd be happy to cure any disease you had... but you always paid a price."

"And I take it that Marie is the lucky person to pay that price," Danielle Owens said.

Marie blushed. "Yeah, we think so." She didn't mention that it was because of Nezumi, because the person that Nezumi would be interested in would be the one her fathers would be interested in. She didn't want to be that embarrassed.

Heck, with her mother there, looking torn between letting her be an adult and protecting her, she didn't want to admit that a girl had fallen for her. That would be too close to telling her mom that she considered herself bisexual. And she wasn't ready to tell her that quite yet.

"Marie is the type of person my father likes in his harem," Naoko said. Marie hoped she wouldn't mention the bisexuality to her mom. "His tastes have changed over the years, but the fact that he collects people... humans... has not. Yes, she would eventually get to leave, but the damage would be done. And it is possible, though rare, that a child could result. I... I am the result of that kind of union. I have never known my mother."

Oh yeah, she was definitely going to have to talk with her mother. She wouldn't have a choice about it. To protect ones child, that was important, and her mother was no exception. And her mother would not let the price of the cure be her daughter, no matter how temporary that would be.

Marie wasn't too keen on it either, to tell the truth. She had better things to do with her life than to be somebody's sex toy, even temporarily. Her mother had raised her better than that, taught her to think for herself, to be herself. When she'd talked to her mother about the quiverfull movement, and how she hadn't wanted children at all, her mother had been understanding, reminding her that she'd seen her grow up... and she had the right to her own beliefs.

"Do you really want to be the ones sacrificed, or let Marie be sacrificed, to save your world?" Naoko asked.

Angela closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "The good of the many outweighs the need of the few... or the one." But she didn't open her eyes, didn't look at Marie, didn't look at Naoko. Marie wondered if she'd be able to look at herself in a mirror if things happened and Marie was taken away.

"Really?" Naoko asked, sounding scornful. "Only someone who hasn't seen such sacrifices being made can really say that. I wouldn't turn someone over to them who was my own worst enemy."

"Nor I, from what Naoko has said," Dr. Schultz said, coming around to stand beside the Japanese woman. "Can you really sacrifice your own neighbor in hopes that they will fix the problems here?"

Det was looking away too, now. Marie knew he wanted to go home, was almost compelled to go home, but he was a decent boy, he knew better than to let them use Marie. His parents were a good question; they didn't want to go home, but they might be into letting Naoko's people cure the plague. After all, it was their home. Marie just hoped they didn't consider her worth sacrificing.

Her mother certainly would be opposed to it. Way opposed to it. And Marie wouldn't blame her.

The rest of them? Well, the Owens family she wasn't sure of, even Det. Disa and Keegan she had no clue about, but they seemed in no hurry to go home at least. Greer and Michael seemed settled in as well, and she had no idea what they wanted. Lucas and Teresa had expressed desires to go home, but she had no clue on how far they were willing to go. Dr. Schultz was adamant about Marie not paying that price, she had no clue how Dr. Schultz's daughter felt (who wasn't there anyway), Naoko as hell didn't want to go home, and Nezumi did... unfortunately taking Marie with her.

Oh boy, was she in for talking to the rest of them about it. Better to have an idea on how people felt, and try to resolve it the best way possible for the continuing harmony of the neighborhood. People wouldn't figure it out that day; it would have to percolate in their minds for a day or two. She just hoped they'd listen to Naoko and Dr. Schultz.

The meeting broke up after that, and after helping put things away, Marie returned home. She really wasn't looking forward to having a conversation with her mom about what she was planning to do, but she didn't see that she had a choice in the matter if most of the neighborhood didn't oppose the invaders.

Her mother was sitting in her usual chair, sipping a cup of tea. Iced tea, dark and rich and the way her mom liked it. Next to the couch sat another glass of tea, just as dark, with more ice than her mother's; her mom's concession to her own tastes.

"How long have you known?" her mother asked.

"A few days, maybe a week or two," Marie said. "Naoko and I have been trying to make plans, and we wanted to bring the neighborhood together. We intend to resist the invaders, and I'm not that keen on being used as a sacrifice. I just hope that everybody comes to their senses and agrees with me and Naoko."

"I couldn't believe that someone would be willing to do that," her mother said. "And a librarian...."

Marie knew her mom knew that librarians were just like the rest of them, human. And yet to her mother, as well as herself, it seemed dissonant that a librarian would support forcing someone into a life that Naoko had described... and Naoko hadn't mentioned the horrors in the meeting that she had to Marie.

 

"People want to be safe, normal, everything," Marie said. "And if they don't have to pay the price, they're often blind to it."

She had to wonder how people could be blind to it, given Naoko's forceful presentation, but it wasn't like she could ask without accusing people of being blind. And she wasn't about to go around the neighborhood doing so, because she didn't want to be pitied for being the potential victim either.

Her mother had the expression that practically screamed that she was going to do it instead. Because, of course, Marie was her daughter, and one protected those one loved.

"Let them think things out," Marie said. "These people have consciences, they know right from wrong, and they know me. Or at least I hope they know me. Naoko and Dr. Schultz will also be on their cases, because I know they're really opposed to this. And I rather hope to avoid it too."

Naoko would really be up everybody's rear ends if they thought sacrificing Marie, sacrificing anybody was a good idea. Of course, Naoko would have it almost as bad as Marie if her father came; Naoko might not have minded sex, but she saw there were better things in life to do.

"How likely or how fast would this invasion be?" her mother asked.

"We don't know," Marie said. "It might be tomorrow, it might be a few years. It depends on how long it takes Naoko's kin to find her and Nezumi. Naoko isn't sure how long, she just knows that it's technologically possible to do so. For all we know, they might end up on their equivalent land in Japan and have to find their way across the Pacific Ocean to Sacramento. Or they might end up with a portal right on South Land Park. By that time, I might become someone uninteresting to them; Naoko doesn't know, but better to convince people to prepare now, even if it takes them a year or five to get here."

"Oh," her mother said.

"I don't know whether to treat it as something we have to prepare for as if it's going to happen, or something in the next couple of years, whether we have to worry about them coming in from Japan, or worry about the portal dropping into the middle of the library. Actually, I could do without the portal appearing in the library period."

"But you think it will happen?" her mother asked, still concerned but calm at the moment.

"Naoko does, Naoko knows the technology of her kin, and I believe Naoko if she says that it's going to happen. In the state the world is in, I don't think the remainder of humanity or our new neighbors have detecting a gateway caused by a potential invasion force from another dimension as a possibility."

She was aware of how extremely odd that sounded, how much her life sounded like a science fiction novel. Some of her neighbors were aliens or not full human, she herself was pyrokinetic, her neighborhood was facing an invasion from extremely terrestrial nonhumans, some of which looked human, and Naoko's little sister wanted to be her girlfriend, in the romantic sense. Or the sex sense. Or both. Oh, and said little sister thought that Naoko was trying to date Marie behind her back.

Make that a science fiction novel with some really weird parts. Like the romance. Marie would more admit that she'd become pyrokinetic than the fact that she'd figured out she was bi.

And if this was a science fiction novel, then she was going to get really annoyed with the author.

"That sounds very weird," her mother said.

"Mom, given what I know about my neighbors, somehow this doesn't sound all that weird," Marie said, wishing she could share some of the unusual traits of some of their neighbors.. "It's just nastier than anything else that's happened here."

"I think we should start also coordinating with the police department," her mother said. "Given how up to date we seem to be getting, they might be useful."

"Well, at least if we tell them that there might be monsters appearing," Marie said. "And if they believe us. Maybe they haven't seen as much weird as I have. Or several of our neighbors have."

"I wasn't thinking of that, actually," her mother said, "I was thinking in general to let them know we exist so that if something happens, they know we're there. Communications."

"You're right," Marie said. "I'm sure they'd be able to deal with that. But I'm not sure about the whole invasion thing. Admittedly, the last time I dealt with the police was when a jerk wasn't looking where he was going getting on the freeway in Pasadena, and nearly ran me over. Okay, maybe I have dealt with the police, but more along the lines of passing on messages to the correct party."

The messages she'd taken were fleeting; she was pretty sure one had been in Fresno, or around Fresno, but that's all she was sure about. Or maybe that had been Bakersfield. She got those two mixed up for some reason. She remembered the idiot driver and the police officer, though, because she'd gotten a free ride to work from the police, which had been very nice of them.

But still, one sometimes was scared of dealing with the police, even when one had to and was in the right. And it wasn't like they probably knew how to deal with an invasion by non-humans, even human-appearing non-humans. Especially human-appearing non-humans.

She'd better stop there. It was bad enough anticipating the invasion. Telling the police about a potential invasion was doubly scary, especially for one who had already had psychiatric help.

"Still," her mother said. "We should go to them."

"I know," Marie said. "I'm just figuring out who should." She certainly didn't want to go, which kind of left Angela and her mother if she was going for native, or practically anybody except Mr. Owens if she was considering anybody in the neighborhood.

"I'll go," her mother volunteered. Her mother was good at that kind of thing. Marie envied her mother. At ease in meetings, knew the right thing to say every time, dealt with other offices and the legislative offices and always came out right.

"Thanks," she said. "We'll gather all the data for you. As for the invasion, I don't want to freak myself out about it, and I know I will because... well, I don't do well waiting for the other shoe to drop."

She'd heard that Anxiety Disorder - the General kind, anyway, was the dread of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and from her experience, that's exactly what it felt like. Everything would be so happy and nice and everything, and then something would go wrong. Or one felt like being happy and everything, but the fear that something might go wrong kept one from celebrating it.

"I know," her mother said. "It's too bad you can't break into the local pharmacy and nab some prozac."

"I hated it when I was on it," Marie said, "I took myself off of it. Might have not been the brightest thing, but I'm the one that insisted on medication. And I might have needed it then, but I couldn't rely on it. Besides, I'd feel even more wrong about breaking into a pharmacy to get drugs, because I'm technically not on prescription for prozac."

"True," her mom said. "That wouldn't be honest."

"Yeah, I kind of prefer to stay honest even if with everything going on, I can't stay within the law," Marie said. "Heck, one of the reasons I'm afraid of going to the police is because I've been breaking into stores. That's not exactly legal, even if I have been paying for the merchandise. The last thing I need is to be arrested - though that might solve my problem of getting kidnapped by Naoko's relatives."

"I'd rather it not come to that," her mother said. "You wouldn't want to ruin your record with an arrest, even to save yourself from an invasion."

"Seems like a heck of a choice, doesn't it?" Marie asked. "To worry about getting kidnapped versus being arrested. Neither is a great choice, lesser of two evils." She paused. "Hey, there is one good thing; if you turn after the church onto those little sidestreets going towards Freeport, you come out practically at the police station itself."

"I'd forgotten about that," her mom admitted. "You used to walk down those streets for exercise."

"Plus, it was the easier way to get to the bank," Marie admitted. "That's only a little ways down from the police station. You remember when it was a mall? I think they had Leatherby's in there, as well as River's Edge Hobbies. That hasn't been anywhere near River's Edge for a while."

"I'd quite forgotten. That used to be across the street, too, where the library used to be."

"Yeah. I forget what's in there now, a preschool, maybe? Not that that's probably in use much."

"How things change," her mom said. "How Sacramento has changed."

"Yeah," Marie replied, feeling nostalgic. She didn't want to remind her mother that she'd discovered D&D at that hobby shop, because her mother thought she devoted too much time to that anyway. Marie didn't even want to try to point out what she'd learned - her vocabulary was much the richer after a decade or two of D&D - so she didn't mention it.

And now, of course, the were in a world only slightly more sane than Gamma World. Gamma World was full of strange life forms and mutations, whereas her world the mutations came from other worlds, and the apocalypse had been a combination of the supernatural and the plague.

"I think I'll worry about getting things back to normal, and living my life," Marie said. "And leaving the worrying about invasions to Naoko. She can tell me what we need, I'll try to make sure we're coordinated, and if they come? We'll figure out where to go from there."

She had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be that easy. Some of that was no doubt the anxiety, but the rest of it? Plain common sense. Or maybe it was all anxiety. Some paranoia, maybe; if one had one or two mental disorders, why not a third? Paranoia went well with anxiety. She knew that one all too well.

But, despite everything, she managed to go to bed and have a good sleep, rise again in the morning and go to work, finish her day - and get the most recent news and rumors from her coworkers - and go on to the library job.

Except she was intercepted on the way there, by Nezumi.

"I see my sister's been lying again," the girl said. "To you, to everybody. And I'm going to have to deal with those lies."

"Naoko doesn't seem the type to lie," Marie said, trying to seem like she was listening and wondering when Nezumi would stop being so worried about what her sister was saying. Of course, to her Naoko could have been saying lies; it depended on the worldview she had versus the one her sister had. As far as Nezumi seemed concerned, life was a simple one; live without worry, have sex as much as you wanted to, get worshipped for what you were born to be. Marie envied that simplicity, but knew the world was full of shades of grey.

"Big sister has always been a rebel. Always. She was brainwashed at an early age, she can't accept what she's been given as a gift. She could only see what her handlers told her and her own selfish desires."

"Brainwashed?" Marie echoed. Naoko seemed perfectly normal for a omnisexual half-human.

"A man who used to live in our complex fed her lies and taught her to hide those lies from Dad and the others so they didn't know what was happening," Nezumi said. "She grew up to hate Dad and the others, and wanted them to go away - it's not like they can be killed. So she ran away from home with the help of this man, and Dad and the others had to get her back and try to fix the damage that had been done."

"Um. Ah." Marie said, not wanting to argue with Nezumi. She wasn't good at the arguing thing. "I see."

"I'm going to have to go and tell everybody the other side of the story," Nezumi said. She kissed Marie full on the lips again. "Take care, and don't listen to my sister's lies, okay?"

"Uh...." But Nezumi was off, apparently trying to change everybody's minds. Marie groaned and resisted physically facepalming. "Definitely talk to Naoko," she said.

Oh, yeah, talk to Naoko because Nezumi was going to try to shatter the unity of the neighborhood again, at least on the not sacrificing Marie part. Marie could do without being part of Naoko's dad's harem.

She walked into the library after locking her bike. Not that it really needed locking, but she was the kind of person who always locked the house and the car and whatever she'd stepped out of. Unlikely though it was, she wasn't stupid, and the bike was her only really good way down town. Heavens knew what she'd do when the winter and the rains came. Assuming there was still a coherent state government at that point.

Angela was sitting at circulation. She refused to meet Marie's eyes for a moment, and then looked at her sadly, as if asking forgiveness for what she would put Marie through. If she was the one that Nezumi talked to, then she was probably convinced that this was worth the sacrifice. At least she didn't seem convinced that Marie was headed towards a Wonderful Thing, the most Wonderful Thing to happen in her entire life. If what Naoko said was right, then Nezumi would keep talking until everybody except herself, Naoko, and Dr. Schultz were convinced that Marie was going on to better things with her sacrifice.

What Nezumi might do had been discussed between the two of them on the days leading up to the meeting. They could only hope that peoples' moral sense and common sense would keep them from handing Marie over. Or letting Marie be taken away.

Naoko was on reference, where she'd taken over since Catherine had been confined to home. She didn't seem to mind this at all, and Marie bet that she was formulating ideas on how to fight both her own kin and any mischief that her little sister might let loose.

Marie resolved to talk to Naoko later, when Angela wasn't around. If Angela was convinced that Nezumi was right, that she and Catherine would be cured, and that it wouldn't be so bad for Marie, then she'd be dangerous to Naoko and Marie's plans. Marie would have to invite Naoko to dinner or something, probably. Her mom was so less going to be pleased that not only was Marie in danger of being kidnapped by Naoko's family, but it would be because Nezumi fancied her.

Yeah, that was not going to be fun. But at least if her mother knew, she could help in the planning, no matter how embarrassing it was going to be for Marie. Embarrassing, yes, but it always felt good to have one's mom by one's side.

"Want to come by for dinner?" she asked Naoko at one of their many slow moments. "I can make dinner - or mom can, actually - and we can talk."

Naoko nodded. "That sounds good to me." She probably had some idea of American courtesies, and how they differed from her native Japanese ones. And it seemed she caught the implication of letting Angela overhear any part of their plans. Of course, if Angela caught wind of Naoko going over to Marie's house, Nezumi might not react too well, but Nezumi was just going to have to deal.

They eventually finished the day - though it seemed long, now that Marie had invited Naoko over. She felt like any moment that Nezumi would come in and hear that she'd invited Naoko, and try to do something with it. And despite her determination that Nezumi would just have to deal, she was not keen on having to deal with that dealing. Or lack thereof.

After Naoko and Angela closed up, Marie and Naoko headed off to Marie's place, all to aware - or at least Marie was, and she was sure that Naoko noticed - that Angela was watching them leave together.

At least the walk was short back to her place, not much room for Nezumi to interfere even if she knew. Marie had to wonder if Angela was going straight to Nezumi about Marie and Naoko as she walked down the street to her place.

"Mom," she called, "I'm home, and I've brought a friend." She could smell her mother's cooking from the doorway.

Her mother looked through the doorway from the kitchen to the dining room. "Oh, hello, Naoko."

"Sorry I didn't warn you, but there's some issues we had to discuss, and I'm afraid... the library and environs isn't safe anymore to discuss them." Now, that sounded ridiculously paranoid, but then again, it was her safety that was in question, so she felt justified.

"That's okay, let me put in some more," her mother said. "I'm making beef stew. Would that cause a problem?"

Naoko shook her head. "I have no problems eating that, Mrs. Brown." Marie had to wonder if Naoko really had no problems, or if she was being polite. After all, the greeting for coming into and leaving somebody's house in Japanese meant "I am rude/disturbing you" and "I have been rude/have disturbed you", or at least that's what Marie understood it to mean.

She motioned towards the living room. "Why don't you have a seat, I'm going to set the table while mom finishes up dinner. It won't be long."

Naoko nodded, as if she had totally expected what Marie was doing. Learned Japanese politeness. She settled down on the rocking chair while Marie and her mom worked on dinner.

Out of some politeness of her own, once dinner was served, Marie's mother did not say grace. The three of them ate together, and once everyone was mostly done eating, Marie's mother turned to Naoko and said, "I'm glad you came."

"I wish it was in better circumstances," Naoko said. "Unfortunately, my sister does not hold the same opinions as I do, and she is determined to make everybody see her way - and unfortunately, neither your daughter nor I trust Angela not to report on what we're doing."

"Nezumi wants everybody in the neighborhood to think Naoko is bonkers and the invasion is a good thing," Marie explained. "I think she's got Angela pretty much convinced, and besides us, Naoko, and probably Dr. Schultz, I don't know who else can't be convinced that Naoko's people coming is not a good thing."

"Not my people," Naoko corrected. "I may be related, but they are not my people."

Marie made a mental note of that. "Nezumi's people?"

Naoko nodded tersely. "She considers them so, yes."

"So you've come over to discuss this?" Marie's mother asked.

"Right at the moment," Marie said, "This is the most secure place we have for that kind of discussion. This is apparently now 'Save the neighborhood from invaders' headquarters. As well as 'save Marie from being kidnapped by the invaders' headquarters, and 'save Marie from being offered to the invaders by the neighborhood' headquarters."

"I see," her mother said. "Now that we're not having an entire neighborhood meeting, will you bring me up to date, including all the nasty things that we could be looking at?"

"Naoko's probably best equipped on that," Marie said. "After all, it's her world."

"I did tell you that Marie is in danger because my father would be interested in her," Naoko said. "What I did not mention is that he would be interested in her because my sister is interested in her."

"And said sister thinks I'm dating Naoko behind her back, to boot," Marie added. "Nezumi is... not my type." She really wasn't, though Marie was content to let her mother fill in the blanks incorrectly rather than figure out what Marie was.

"Nezumi and our father have similar tastes in sex partners," Naoko continued. "As does another of my father's kind. The only good thing is both of them get bored easily with their sex partners; in good circumstances, Marie could be free of being active within a few months, maybe a year."

Her mom looked horrified, and Marie couldn't blame her. Not that her mother had ever advised her to remain celibate until marriage - a moral standard she held for herself - but she was about as keen on the whole thing as Marie was. "I'd be part of a... group of people he was sleeping with, from what Naoko tells me, but I'm not keen on this happening."

"So, what can we do to help prevent this?" her mother asked. "I'm not very happy about it either."

"Find out what Nezumi is saying, talk to each person, convince them that Nezumi is... optimistic," Marie said. "Because I think that the only ones we can count on to say 'no' are you, me, Naoko, and Dr. Schultz. I think Dr. Schultz has had similiar enough experiences that she knows how much a Bad Idea it is."

"The truth is, they can cure the plague that left your world so depopulated. "But there would be a price to pay. If not Marie, then somebody else here. Marie is just unfortunate enough to be attractive to Nezumi, and so my father would notice her first. He could just leave her to Nezumi." Naoko paused. "Or, he could decide to award her to me, and with his expectations...."

Marie was glad she left it at that. She could no more think of sleeping with Naoko than she did with Nezumi or Nezumi's family.

"Then we have to save both of you," Marie's mother said firmly. "I think you're in as much danger as my daughter is."

"Both in danger and the cause of your daughter's danger," Naoko replied. "Oh, Nezumi will be a factor, but I always come first."

"So, we have to counter Nezumi on the disease thing - and that'll be hard in itself for some of the community - but also the fact that some of our neighbors do want to go home," Marie said. "Det, for example. Maybe some of the others. Not the Owens, or Dr. Schultz, but even the Owenses might accept another world that's not deserted."

"What do we know about whom?" Naoko asked. "This would help."

"I agree," her mother said. "We have to know in order to plan."

Marie took a deep breath. "Okay, going by each person, south to north, about what I know about them." She mentally made a list of the people. "Disa and Keegan I'm sure would like to see a cure, but I don't know what they feel about the price. As for going home, I'm sure they might want to eventually, but they're in no hurry, and from what they've told me, I'm not sure they'd want to let Nezumi's people into their home dimension either."

"That's a very good point to bring up," her mother pointed out. "Because they could decide to invade those worlds as well."

"More to kidnap people from them than to settle. They'd only settle here - after immunizing and curing people, of course - because it's nearly deserted."

Marie's mother nodded. "Got it."

"The Schultzes - well, Dr. Schultz would love a cure, I'm sure, but then again she sounds like she's had some bad experiences with so-called 'benevolent' entities and so she wouldn't cooperate on the cure or the invasion. I don't know about her daughter, though, she seemed very bored. I don't know if she'd like to go back." Marianne Schultz was a bit of an enigma, she had to admit.

"The Owens - well, Det would like to go back, though probably not at the price that I'd pay. But he's one that Nezumi might be able to convince. He was big on duty. His parents definitely don't want to be going home, though I don't know how they feel about the cure."

"Greer and Michael go along with things pretty easily. I don't know how they feel about the cure, but they'd eventually go back. Again, something to bring up, especially about how Nezumi's kin might take some 'souvenirs' back with them when they left. Nezumi we know about, of course. Angela and Catherine would like the cure, damn the consequences, but of course this is their home. And of course, Teresa and Lucas would like to go home, but they seem pretty moral to me. They might have listened to Naoko's words."

"So, four of us for sure, and maybe others," her mother said. "And we'll have to talk to the others."

"A lot of it might have to be me," Marie said. "It's harder to give someone up to make everybody else happy if you're staring that someone in the face. Assuming that Nezumi doesn't convince them I'm going to have an absolutely blissful time doing whatever with her father - or anyone else."

"And I will be able to tell them the truth of things," Naoko said. "I might go separately, depending on what you find when you ask."

"You realize," Marie's mother pointed out, sipping at her tea, "That some of them may not have the courage to tell you the truth?"

"True," Marie admitted. "And I'm not great at detecting that if it's not obvious." Yeah, so not good at that. "But at least we can try."

She was good at try, and somewhat good at do.

"I agree with that," her mother said.

Later on, after she had put the dishes at least in the sink and rinsed them, she took Naoko upstairs, to her bedroom, and closed the door. There were some aspects that her mom did not need to hear. "So, worst case scenario, your father and the others invade and I get swept up. What's my best way to survive this?"

"Hm," Naoko placed one of Marie's stuffed toys back where it had been sitting, before she'd accidentally knocked it over. "The best way is to stay as uninteresting as you can manage. Being relatively exotic is not going to help, but if they stay in Sacramento, non-Japanese are going to become a lot less exotic."

"I just don't want to end up in bed with your father," Marie told her, hunting for the spare foldup chair. It was around there someplace. "Or anybody else if I can help it."

Naoko nodded, settling back against the wall behind Marie's bed. "He's the most likely person for you to end up with. I don't know if there's anybody who'd initially come here that I'd entrust you to." She paused. "No, especially if you don't want to get pregnant. The only one I'd trust not to get you pregnant is asexual, and I don't want to give him a reason to be interested in you either. That inevitably means being experimented on."

"Ow," Marie said, setting up the chair and sitting down in it. "I don't know if I'd like that any better. And your father sounds like he'd drive me crazy."

"Unfortunately, the one I think you'd have most in common with - as I do - focuses on one partner at a time, always female, and would work hard to get you pregnant. If you can escape getting pregnant, he would get bored with you and you'd be free, but... well, depends on how much you impress him. Library work is a plus, and he might forget that you have working ovaries, or at least use you for more than sex."

"That doesn't sound much like something I'd like to do either," Marie said. "But then again, we are discussing worst-case scenario. What about the neighborhood?"

"There's some good aspects to that," Naoko admitted. "It would give Sacramento more population, and it would give more infrastructure to any settling otaku - those serious enough to want to leave their homes to settle in this world and worship Dad's people, that is. So, in a way, it would be not so bad. I just feel sorry for the rest of the city, what there is left of it."

"Yes, we don't want an invasion," Marie reminded her.

"You would have more neighbors, and they would be annoying, assuming you could understand them, that is," Naoko said. "I don't know if the instantaneous proficiency we picked up when coming here would apply to people coming through that gate. And they would annoy you, as they would annoy anybody who has a brain and uses it. Trust me on this."

"Oh, lovely," Marie said. "By the way, why would you practically be worshipped? You said that was something you had to deal with."

"For the most part, the otaku stick to sleeping with my father and the rest of the humanoids," Naoko told her. "But I was supposedly raised by my father and his kind, and as his daughter, I'm as much to be worshipped as my father. There is such a thing as being adored too much."

Marie couldn't imagine being worshipped, but from what Naoko said, it sounded pretty empty. "And Nezumi?"

"Much the same way," Naoko said, "Father raised her, so she is loved and worshipped too. It's just worse for me because not only am I the first child, but I've distinguished myself by being, in their eyes, misguided."

"The whole 'brainwashed' thing that Nezumi mentioned," Marie guessed.

"I'm hardly brainwashed." Naoko's voice was steel. "I know how to use my brain and think critically. And Nezumi and my father don't get that. There are others of his kind that do." She looked at the closet. "I've been involved with some of them."

"Oh." It had taken Marie a second to get the meaning of that. "Personally, I'm celibate. I've chosen to be so until marriage, if that ever happens."

"Then, being involved with anyone is something you have to avoid, at least with Dad and his people." Naoko paused. "There are only two high-ranking - the only ones that are humanoid - that stick to one partner, and they're female and straight." Naoko seemed thoughtful. "There is a vague chance that if you interested one of them enough, you might have a long-term relationship, but that would still involve no marriage, a lot of sex, and probably more than one child - and probably being raised in their father's household, something you want to avoid for their sake."

"That's something to avoid, since I'm not too fond of babies or kids," Marie said. She didn't know how Naoko would react to her being childfree, given that she wasn't exactly shy about discussing sex.

"I'd love to be able to have them," Naoko said quietly, "But I've been sterilized for years. My father most empathetically does not want grandchildren from me. And yes, I would technically be fertile."

"There's another good reason to not let myself be sacrificed, then," Marie said, grateful that Naoko hadn't inadvertently insulted her after the mention that she didn't like the kiddies.

"Yes," Naoko agreed. "Though probably in the remote chance that it happened, you would probably not be the one doing the raising."

"Even better reason, it sounds like," Marie replied. It sounded like the kids, except maybe Naoko, came out rather weird. She had a suspicion that Naoko could be weird, too, but who knew?

"So, we will try to convince people not to hand you over," Naoko said, "And I will prepare you for the worst."

Marie sighed. "Probably the best idea. Though I'm not keen on the idea of sex with either sex."

Naoko paused. "Are you heterosexual?" she asked. "I never did ask."

"On the Kiersey scale, I rate a 1, and ask me some other time," Marie answered.

"Ah. Yes, I'm familiar with what you're talking about," Naoko said, looking towards the closed door of Marie's bedroom. "And your mother?"

"Doesn't know," Marie responded. "And I hope doesn't know until I'm sure how she feels." Trying to get the conversation away from that, she added, "There are other things I've kept from her. For example, I've discovered lately that I'm pyrokinetic."

Naoko blinked. Hard. "Pyrokinetic? Then I know who I do have to keep you away from. Do you know how powerful you are?"

"Um, not really. I can't tell if this is handy for not needing a match to light fires, or if I could cause somebody to spontaneously combust."

"Oh. Still something I wouldn't spread around."

"I know," Marie said. "I think you and maybe Det are the only ones - no, it wasn't Det, it was Disa, and I think she can keep a secret."

Naoko gave a slight nod. "Let's hope you never find out what happens if someone discovers your talent."

"Yeah, of course if I could blow up monsters, that might solve our little invasion problem, wouldn't it?"

"One," Naoko said, "they can't die, and two... could you please avoid blowing up my father? He's a fool, but he is my father, and even if he had to reconstitute himself, I'd hate for him to have to do it."

"Your father is a brainless airhead but you love him anyway?"

"Something like that." Naoko played with a pillow. "He does need to be sealed, but I'm... just not in a hurry to do that."

Marie nodded. "I think I understand." She looked over at Naoko. "So, anything else before we go off to our separate lives, and you have to deal with your sister?"

"Not that I can think of, but knowing myself, I will be thinking about how best to deal with everything," Naoko said. "I just hope this doesn't involve, say, relocating yourself."

Marie sighed. "I hear Boston is nice around this time of year. It's only on the other side of the country."

Naoko got up. "Hopefully, it won't involve that."

"I hope not. I like Sacramento," Marie said. "It is my home, after all."

"I will see what I can do," Naoko said, getting up. "I dread having to deal with my little sister tonight."

Marie didn't blame her, escorting her back down and out the door, where they politely said their goodbyes in Japanese. Marie had to wonder if there were polite phrases in the other language that Naoko knew, the language of her father's people. She'd have to ask and hope not to learn at close range.

The next day was quiet, though Marie was good at avoiding all controversy by not speaking to Naoko, except for job-related reasons, under the sharp eyes of Angela. She was even able to go home without interference. She'd give everybody a day or so to hear things out, and then she'd start speaking to them, starting with Disa and Keegan.

The day after that, before she got to the library, Nezumi intercepted her again. She inwardly sighed, wondering if the other girl had gotten over the delusion that she and Naoko were interested in each other. "Hi, Nezumi," Marie said. "I'm sorry, but I have work to get to shortly." She tried to sound as regretful as possible, while also trying to get the hell out of there before Nezumi said anything which kept her.

"You want to know something?" Naoko's sister asked, in that "I know something you don't know" tone of voice that she found vaguely irritating.

"Sure, what?" Marie asked. Irritating or no, she had to hear. It was her failing.

"I can feel that they're coming," Nezumi said, as if it was a secret. "They're trying to get here, they're trying to find us, and they're nearly succeeding!"

"Oh, that's nice," Marie said, shifting herself so she could bicycle away fast.

Nezumi enveloped her in a sudden hug, "I'm going to put you someplace safe so I can give you to Dad. He'll find a good home for you, safe around people who aren't as damaged as my sister."

"Um. I'm more the intellectual book type," Marie pointed out. "From what I've heard, not the type your father would be interested in. I'd bore him to death."

Laughing, Nezumi answered, "Maybe. Maybe not."

"I've heard there's another of your Dad's kind that's more into books and libraries and that sort of thing," Marie said, trying to distract Nezumi from her cause - or at least protecting Marie from Naoko.

"You mean Kanei?" Nezumi seemed bemused. "You're right, you are kind of his type. I can see if he likes you, when he comes."

"Wouldn't I be in my best light at the library?" Marie asked. "I hear his library is fantastic!" She winced inwardly at the exclamation point, but it was a part of fitting in, and she needed to seem to fit in, to seem less dangerous, in need of protection.

"I don't know, but Naoko does," Nezumi admitted. "She's the most bookish person I've ever seen except for Kanei, who's the most bookish of the Andetto."

"Your father's kind?" Marie asked, rolling the word around in her mind. "I admit, Naoko's never told me the name."

"Naoko shuns the world. I revel in it. Which doesn't mean that I'm as dumb as she thinks I am." There was a harder tone to her voice. "Naoko hasn't even bothered to learn the name of Owens-san's species!"

"Which is?" Marie asked, making a mental note to see the Owens family. She'd clearly talked to them.

"They're called the Zaiburiansu," Nezumi said proudly.

"Oh." She wasn't going to try that one on them until she made sense of it.

"As for the rest... I guess you're right, if you're going to be attractive to Kanei you have to be around books," Nezumi said. "I'll help you do that; it'll make the transition to your new life easier."

"I thought you were attracted to me," Marie couldn't help but say. It probably did her more harm than good, but she couldn't help saying it.

"I am, but...." Nezumi gave her a lopsided smile. "Giving you to him probably would be better than having to fight over you with Naoko. He's her King anyway, so it fits."

"King?" Marie echoed.

"You could say that the ranks and suits among the andetto are like playing cards," Nezumi said. "Our father is the king of one suit, but her temperament makes her another one, so she's over there. Well, there's more complexity in there than what I said, but that's essentially it. My father is from the suit Naoko's in, but I was raised by her father and I have his temperament."

"Wait a minute, you're not biologically related?" Marie asked. Naoko had said nothing about that. In fact, she hadn't said much at all about her father's kind.

"No, not at all. But even though Naoko's temperament is so much like the other suit's, Dad raised her, and so he's still considered her father and we're considered sisters."

"Ah," Marie said. "So you're her sister because he both raised you, even though her temperament is like another... suit's?"

"Exactly." Nezumi was practically jumping up and down. "You are a lot like her in a way, you'll do best with someone in her suit."

"I can see that," Marie said. "The a lot like her, I mean."

"I'll see what I can do when they come," Nezumi said. "It's not like they won't be here soon."

"I have to be off, Nezumi," Marie said. "Library job."

"Right," Nezumi said, smiling. "I guess that's a good idea. Just don't listen to my sister's lies!"

She practically ran off in the other direction, while Marie was stuck shaking her head.

Again, throughout the rest of the day, Marie scrupulously avoided Naoko, hoping the other would show up again at her doorstep for dinner. She did get a chance to talk to Disa, however, as the other came in with another datapoint. Disa reaffirmed that she had no interest in going home or having the invaders come. "I was kidnapped once," Disa said. "While it came out well - really well - I am not going to give another being over to invaders to save myself. Keegan had to go through me being kidnapped, so he likes it even less."

She ran across the Owens family before getting home, out on an afternoon walk. "We certainly don't want to go home," Danielle Owens said, her husband echoing her agreement. "As for the cure... she is telling the truth. I just... don't know what to make of it."

"Yes, she is about the cure, it's the price that matters," Marie said. "Naoko told me that I'm not the only one their kin might find attractive - I'm just the one that would come to their attention first." Thank goodness Det was too young, even if he did want to go home, and then she wondered if she'd shouted that, and glad that she'd gotten into the habit of telling the truth to the Owens family.

"You do have a tendency to shout your thoughts when you're worried," Danielle Owens observed.

"I can teach you some shielding techniques," Nerran Owens said, volunteering himself. "That way, you don't have to worry about shouting your intentions to every telepath in radius."

"Thank you," Marie said, relieved. "And Det?"

"It's hard to live in a telepathic household without everyone knowing your every move," he said. "But you and Naoko were making it pretty clear in the meeting - and in your other meeting the other night. Did I mention you tend to be loud and clear in your thoughts? I don't want to go home to have these people invade it."

"Though I do think they'd find the ultra-stuffy part of Nerran's people's culture more than extremely boring," Danielle said with some amusement.

"Extremely boring," Nerran responded, sharing what was clearly an inside joke with his wife.

"It's really... that boring?" Marie asked, not sure what they meant.

"I'd say strict gender roles and arranged marriages, along with a nice healthy dose of xenophobia works wonders." The amusement in Danielle's eyes had died down. "Though the xenophobia's quietly dying. In fact, it's died down enough that we have to contend with Nerran's grandfather bugging us about marrying Det off at fourteen. Fourteen! Det's human."

"I... kinda sorta heard something about that," Marie said. "And the rest?"

"Given your fate, from what you were projecting? I couldn't - we couldn't do that to you," Danielle said. "Oh, and we're definitely going to have to teach you shielding. You can get a bit... explicit."

Marie tried not to blush too much. "Oh, dear."

"Have a good evening, and we'll talk about the shielding lessons," Nerran Owens said.

Waving a goodbye to the Owens family, Marie came to her own home and started cooking after putting her bag down. She made food for three just in case Naoko came over, which Naoko probably would. Ever since they couldn't really talk in the library, her home had definitely become planning HQ.

"That's a lot of food," her mom said, coming into the kitchen.

"We're going to be planning HQ probably again tonight," Marie explained.

"Ah. Three places?" her mom asked, getting out the silverware. "I like Naoko."

"I like Naoko too," Marie said. "I just wish that we weren't having to have dinner every other night together to plan things so I don't have to do something rash like move to Boston."

"I'd rather you moved to Pasadena," her mother said. "I haven't heard from your aunt, but I'm sure she'd be glad to take you in if she's alive, and they have that whole house if she isn't."

Marie grimaced. "Yeah, their whole huge house and nothing but me. I'd go nuts." Though there was that nice mystery bookstore nearby, and a grocery store up the street....

"And me," her mother said. "I'd go down with you. I know the jobs you probably need are up here, but I want you safe and free. Career advancement can happen later."

"Much later," Marie said. "Thanks, mom." She would have hugged her mother if she hadn't had to keep such a close eye on the food.

The doorbell rang. "I bet that's Naoko," her mother said.

"Could you get it?" Marie asked, still busy with the food.

"Sure," her mother said, and Marie listened as her mother opened the door and greeted Naoko. Which made Marie relax muscles she hadn't realized were tensed. Yeah, she was worried about having Nezumi drop by for sure.

"Hi, Naoko," she said, calling out from the kitchen. "Dinner'll be ready shortly."

"Naoko, would you like some tea?" her mother asked.

"Please," Naoko said. "I would love some tea."

"Would you like it cold or hot?" her mother asked, because just because she and her mother knew what the other liked didn't mean they knew what Naoko liked.

"Hot, please," Naoko said. Marie moved over to let her mom grab a mug and a teabag, to fill the glass with water and stick it in the microwave.

The drink was soon done, and so was the food, so Marie dished the food out on to a plate while her mother went out with the tea. Marie presumed she'd set it at the table, and she was proved right as Naoko settled down in a chair.

The three of them had dinner together, reserving the serious talk until after. "So, what did you find out?" Marie asked.

"My sister read me the riot act, of course," Naoko said. "Unsurprisingly. I talked to Lucas and Teresa; I get the impression that their universe might be able to beat the Undead if they come calling."

"Unlike ours, of course," Marie said. "We're not in any state to handle an invasion."

"Unfortunately," Naoko said, "You're right. As far as I can tell."

"Marie and I will move to Pasadena if we need to," her mother said. "Would you like to go with us, Naoko?" Sure, Naoko was still somewhat a stranger, but she saw the sense behind her mother's words. Naoko was in as much danger as Marie was, so it was only right to offer to take her with them.

"Thank you," Naoko said. "But they'd only chase me and get Marie as well if I went with you."

"Okay, bad idea," Marie acknowledged. "You sure you'll be okay?"

Naoko shrugged. "I've lived with this before. I can pretend to conform. It is something I've had to do more than once in my life."

"That seems pretty fatalistic," Marie's mother noted. She looked over at Naoko. "Are you sure?"

"I'll live," Naoko said. "Better to save Marie by staying here than to put her in danger."

"Speaking of which, your sister is now convinced that I not only am compatible with someone named Kanei, but I deserve to be with him. On the good side, that convinced her to let me go to the library instead of kidnapping me...."

Naoko made a face. "That's not a very good improvement in things. Though Nezumi at least letting go is good. I take it she's renounced her claim in order to give you to Kanei?"

"That's what I got," Marie said. "She also gave me other information about your family and your father's kind. I don't know how much about it is true, however."

"Who knows with my sister." Naoko leaned back in her chair. "Did she say anything extraordinary?"

"I don't know, but she was pretty da- darn sure that the portal was going to happen soon. Or open soon, anyway." Marie changed her wording in mid-sentence, though she was sure her mom had heard way worse.

Naoko let out a particularly growly word that Marie didn't understand. "You might want to start packing. And moving."

"That bad?" Marie asked. "How soon?"

"I don't know," Naoko said, folding her arms, "But she was always better at sensing the presence of father's kind than I was."

"So, tomorrow, next week, or...." Her mother seemed ready to pack, or at least plan.

"It could be either way, but I wouldn't want to be here in a month if I was the two of you," Naoko said.

"Not be here next month, got it," Marie said. "Mom?"

"We'll be out of here sooner than that," her mother said. "Tomorrow, I can talk to human resources, see if they can draft up something for both of us that say we're state employees, then we go south as soon as we can stock up on food and other things."

"Don't you wish you had the SUV?" Marie said, thinking of her aunt's.

"Yes, but even a station wagon would do," her mom replied. "Which we don't have, and we can't afford right now."

Marie nodded. "And we're not about to steal one, so that's off the list. Besides, we might have to push the car halfway to Pasadena. Or most of the way."

"We'll put more money in for food," her mother said. "The mortgage is paid off, so that's not a problem. Utilities I can pay if needed. We'll handle things one way or another."

"We just wish you could come with," Marie said. "But you're right, Nezumi's pretty much said the same thing about you."

Naoko nodded.

"Anybody want desert?" Marie's mother asked.

After dinner, Naoko and Marie headed up to Marie's room. "So, what did you want to say that you didn't want to say in front of your mother?" Naoko asked.

"Nezumi has given up," Marie said. "I'm not sure this is much better. She, um, tried to explain suits and something to do with playing cards, and temperaments. And the fact that you weren't related."

"Oh," Naoko said. "I'd explain, and would have explained, but I didn't want you to have to deal with my world."

"Hopefully, I won't," Marie said. "But tell me anyway, tomorrow, at the library. Within earshot of Angela. So that I can sound like I'm eager to embrace my 'new world'."

"Why?" Naoko asked.

"I believe it's better to pretend and get out than seem like I'm resisting," Marie explained.

"Ah," Naoko said. "So you're like me. You hide until they go away, or let you go away."

"Only if I can't get away in time," Marie said.

"I can only hope that doesn't happen," Naoko said politely. "Yes, I will do that, if it'll help."

"Thanks," Marie said, genuinely thankful. A chance to know more, plus posturing? That would really be a help.

After she watched Naoko leave and closed the door, her mother came downstairs from the solar. "I've been thinking," her mom said, "That we should go to the store tomorrow. Probably I'm the best one to do that."

"The store not right around the corner is best, if Nezumi's suspicious," Marie said. "Or if you want it to look like a normal grocery run, do the nearest store."

"Right," her mother said absently. "I'll figure it out. They'll probably give me a half or three quarters day if I ask, then I can shop and start hording groceries. Then we have to decide what we can pack."

Marie nodded. "Let's hope Nezumi's folk take a while. At least until after Sunday. I could use going to church before we leave." She wondered suddenly if All Saints in Pasadena was running. It probably was. That church was way too stubborn to die. Heck, it had repulsed the IRS!

"I'd like that too," her mother admitted. "And it's only a few days. We can go to church and then leave after. It's more convenient to the freeway, too."

"And out of Nezumi's view," Marie added. She wasn't sure she'd describe it as 'more convenient', though it did help that one way signs didn't seem to matter much anymore.

"That's what I said," her mother told her. "Today's Tuesday, we can be packed by Sunday."

"Oh, yeah," Marie responded. "I'm so glad you got the larger car, actually."

Her mother nodded. "I'm glad I did too, now. We can put things both in the trunk and the backseat. We should be able to stock supplies - at least some of them - to get us to Pasadena. If we have to push, it'll be more than a day."

"Let's hope for hotels we can break into," Marie said. "Those that post their rates so we can pay."

"That's a good idea," her mother said. "We'll see how long it takes us."

"Yeah." Marie said, sitting down on the couch. "It's strange... now that we know what we're going to do, have a deadline, are going... I feel so much more at peace."

"That's how you always have been," her mother said. "You're better when you know what you're doing."

"Isn't that the truth," Marie replied. "It's sad that we can't tell people we're going, except maybe Naoko and Dr. Schultz. I know some others that'll know anyway, can't do much about that, but I trust them not to tell on us to Nezumi either."

"We should invite at least Naoko to dinner," her mother said, "Tell her how to take care of the house."

"And the cats?" Marie asked. "Take them with us, or leave them here?"

"Take them with us, if we can," her mother said. "If we can't, we'll discuss it with Naoko. I'm just glad they survived this whole thing."

"I'm glad they have too," Marie said, watching Chocolate pace around the room like she usually did. Spook was no doubt still hiding. "Maybe do a mock packing on Friday beforehand."

"Before that, even," her mother said. "Unless we have Naoko in on Saturday."

"Let's feed Naoko on Saturday, go on from there," Marie said.

"Sounds good to me," her mother told her. "Don't worry, we'll survive this."

Marie nodded. "I'm going to take a bath and go to bed."

And she did.

The next day, she went through her day at the State, then headed out to the park above the Subterranean. The building had been meant to be more underground than it was; then the water table issue had come up and it went down only one floor. The park above was part dirt, part sculpture garden, part grassy area. She was meeting her mom for lunch in the grassy part, above where the trains used to come at 8th and O Station.

"I so forgot how nice this was," she said. Sure, homeless people slept near the vents in the winter, sometimes slept in the park in the summer, but there were no homeless people, or at least she hadn't seen any in a while. Not with all the housing available. She wondered if somebody had taken up residence in Dorothea Puente's home, not that far north of where they were. Marie had seen it on a guided walk, seen the concrete where dirt had been, where corpses had been. And then she'd walked on, as if it was a normal house.

Now it was a normal house. Nobody was much around to care.

"I forgot, too, with everything that happened," her mom admitted. "It seems so strange to be eating here as if everything was normal."

"Everything isn't normal," Marie said. "If it was, then we'd be listening to irritating train announcements every five to seven minutes." She marveled at how she missed those announcements, wondered how much more she'd miss them when they moved south. She wondered if she could move somewhere near the light rail station in Pasadena, and if their trains were still moving.

And then the sculpture in her line of sight shimmered. Shimmered again. Marie stood up, standing between the shimmering spot and her mom as somebody came through it. A teenage boy about Marie's age, with a red shirt over an undershirt, and black pants. Then another stepped through. A man with a black-and-white striped floral-patterned jacket and a shirt of a color Marie hoped never to see again, a dark pink, maybe a lighter red. And then the monsters came through. Several of them, with chains and metal and all sorts of things that Marie was sure that she didn't want to mess with.

The teenager rumbled something to the other man. The other man rumbled back. Whatever it was, whatever made the situation so funny to them, Marie didn't know. But she did know one thing. She had heard the language before.

Naoko and Nezumi had spoken it enough in her presence that she'd recognize it anywhere.

"Mom," she said, "I think that we've now been invaded." She didn't dare say more, didn't want these beings to know she knew, didn't want them tipped off. All she knew is that she and her mom had to get out of there as soon as possible, leave.

"I see that," her mother said, and the tone said that she knew exactly what Marie meant. But both of them were frozen, not able to say anything.

The invading crowd bore down on them. The teenager smiled. And Marie knew that her life was definitely not going to be sane from then on.

-end

**Author's Note:**

> Marie Brown - originally a Power Rangers Ninja Storm OC, but she's migrated into a few fandoms now.  
> Dani, Nerran, and Det are all OCs from a Power Rangers Time Force universe.  
> Disa and Keegan are Starman (TV) OCs, and my first ones from about 30 years ago.  
> Naoko and Nezumi Tanaka are Kamen Rider Blade OCs.  
> Teresa DeSantos and Lucas Scott are Power Ranger Turbo OCs.  
> Greer Lewis and Michael Gardner are Highlander: The Series OCs.  
> Rosemary Schultz and her daughter Marianne are Earth: Final Conflict OCs.
> 
> (And of note, the cats Spook and Chocolate are based on real cats - 'Spook' died a few years ago, while 'Chocolate' died a few weeks ago, and this is posted in their memory.)


End file.
